Palin says she's been exploited by Couric and Fey

-Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says CBS News anchor Katie Couric and comic actress Tina Fey have been "exploiting" her.
Palin also is questioning whether Caroline Kennedy is getting better treatment from the news media in her quest for a Senate seat than Palin herself received as Republican John McCain's running mate.

Palin reflected on her campaign for national office in an interview this week with conservative radio talk-show host and filmmaker John Ziegler. Clips are posted on YouTube.

Palin gave Couric a rare interview at the beginning of her campaign, and Fey frequently impersonated Palin on "Saturday Night Live."

Palin says she thinks there may be a "class issue" involved in the press coverage of Kennedy and her own bid for office.

Sarah Palin installed a tanning bed at the governor's mansion

Posted by ESNEAD on September 15, 2008 in sarah palin

What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?

A tanning bed!

Seems Sarah Palin installed a tanning bed in the governor's mansion in 2007.

"She did. She paid for it with her own money," Roger Wetherell, chief communications officer of Alaska's Department of Transportation and Public Facilities told Us Weekly.

"It was done shortly after she took office [in early 2007] and moved into the mansion," Wetherell told the Narco News, who first reported the story.

According to Wetherell, it was paid for with her own money and purchased used from a health club.

Tanning beds can cost up to $35,000 to install in a home -- not including parts, Alaska-based Color Me Tan manager Erin Weise told the Narco News. Weise added, "I don't think it's normal for people to have a tanning bed in their house. It's expensive."

Palin's running mate, John McCain, battled skin cancer in 1993 and 2000 and has admitted to being a regular wearer of SPF 30, long sleeves and a hat in the sun. Bet he won't be in favor of her installing one of these babies.

The irony here is that Palin declared May 2007 to be Skin Cancer Awareness Month in Alaska. In the press release, it read, "Skin cancer is caused, overwhelmingly, by over-exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun and from tanning beds.”

Photo: Getty Images

Mother of Palin daughter's boyfriend arrested

AP – Sherry Johnston, mother of Levi Johnston, talks about her son at her home in Wasilla, Alaska in this …

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Alaska state troopers have arrested the mother of Bristol Palin's boyfriend on drug charges.

Sherry L. Johnston was arrested Thursday after troopers served a search warrant on a Wasilla home. The 42-year-old Johnston has been charged with six felony drug counts.

Troopers did not identify the drug involved in a brief mention on the agency's Web site.

Johnston is the mother of 18-year-old Levi Johnston. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP nominee for vice president, announced in September that her 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant and Johnston was the father.

Sherry Johnston was released from jail in Palmer on $5,000 bail.

Democrats Back Palin?

For a political figure whose campaign got pretty damn surreal (moose hunting in full makeup), it could get even spookier. We checked in with some of the key Republicans who managed to not get Sarah Palin elected vice president a couple of weeks ago. What's going to come of their expensively dressed dame now?

"The GOP is split down the middle right now," remarked one of our top Washington insiders, who breaks bread with these red-state types quite regularly. "One faction wants to cleave closer to the Christian right—and those are the ones who think Palin is as close to the Second Coming as we're gonna get—and the other faction wants to distance themselves from the wack jobs and re-establish the party's strengths in the areas of economic development, smaller government, states' rights and moderate trade policy."

Wack jobs? In the Republican party? Quel joke, n'est-ce pas?

The best case scenario we're hearing from those Republicans who don't want Palin coming back for another stab at national politics: She stays in Alaska, gets a book deal from a conservative Christian imprint and we only hear another peep from her in about a year, and then she goes away.

"However, she's a crafty little minx with Hillary-type ambitions," added our Washington insider, "so don't count her out in any way, shape or form. She could pull a Ross Perot in four years, because she's as nutty and self-absorbed as he is and has the support of a very right-leaning minority with deep pockets who will fund her because Jesus told them to."

Indeed. But did you all know the entire Holy-Rollin' Democratic party is dying for the big-haired hon to re-enter the national race again? Latest Potomac poop is that a bunch of moneyed Washington Dems are secretly planning on funding her race in 2011, now, that's funny.

Cold realities await Gov. Sarah Palin in Alaska

By GENE JOHNSON

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Gov. Sarah Palin, heralded by some conservatives as the future of the Republican Party, faces some cold political realities in present-day Alaska.

Within days of the McCain-Palin ticket's defeat earlier this month, the unsuccessful GOP vice presidential nominee capped her tumultuous two months on the campaign trail with a whirlwind series of national media interviews and a headline-grabbing appearance at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Florida.

Now it's back to her day job at the state capital in Juneau.

Palin's state budget proposal is due in a month, with plummeting oil prices slashing Alaska's revenues by billions of dollars.
The 1,700-mile natural gas pipeline she bragged about on the campaign trail — "We began a nearly $40 billion-dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence," she said at the Republican National Convention — is nowhere near being built.

Some hard feelings linger over her administration's initial decision to ignore subpoenas in the investigation of whether she abused her power in firing the public safety commissioner who wouldn't oust her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper.

"The main focus is going to be on the gas line and on the long-term financial issues," said Democratic state Sen. Bill Wielechowski. "You're going to see really a clampdown on government services."

Uncertain is whether the bipartisanship that existed during Palin's 20 months as governor can survive the heated rhetoric from the presidential campaign and her own political ambitions, with the 44-year-old clearly signaling that she's open to a bid for president in 2012.

The difficult task at hand "provides the governor with a great opportunity to roll up her sleeves and get back to her job," said Kenneth Khachigian, a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan. "She's got four or five election cycles ahead of her where she can do things. She doesn't have to comment on 2012 or 2016. Being a good governor is the best thing she can do right now."

Among the challenges she faces:

_THE BUDGET:
Alaska has no income or sales tax, and a huge chunk of its annual revenue — as much as 90 percent — comes from taxes and fees on oil companies. When oil prices soar, as they did this summer, so do the state's coffers: Alaska in the past two years has socked away billions in its already massive savings accounts.

But one of those accounts, the $28 billion Alaska Permanent Fund, sends every Alaskan a dividend each year — this year it was $2,069. So tapping its income to pay for government is considered political suicide, and falling oil prices can put big pressure on state spending.

The governor's chief economist is working on a new revenue forecast, and many lawmakers expect the state to drastically reduce spending on such things as road projects.

_THE PIPELINE:
With overwhelming support from Democrats, Palin awarded a license to TransCanada in August to pursue building a pipeline that would carry natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to an existing pipeline network in Alberta.

Although the state granted TransCanada $500 million to plan the pipeline, there's no guarantee it will be built. TransCanada says it won't get financing for the massive project until it has guarantees from oil companies to ship the gas through the pipeline; the oil companies say they won't give such guarantees unless Alaska sets a fixed tax rate on production of the gas, and Palin says she won't approve the rates the oil companies want.

Solving that problem will require not only cooperation from the Legislature, but probably from the oil companies Palin has battled. And her claim to being a national leader on energy issues depends on it.

_TROOPERGATE AND THE CAMPAIGN:
The episode — and the media spotlight that resulted from Palin's vice presidential nomination — drew attention to practices that simply can't be ignored.

Palin's administration routinely used private e-mail accounts for state business, circumventing public disclosure laws. "We will undoubtedly address that in some form of legislation," said Democratic Sen. Hollis French, who oversaw the Troopergate investigation.

Lawmakers also said they could hold hearings on, and possibly restrict, Palin's practice of charging the state for her children's travel and taking per diem payments for nights spent in her Wasilla home.

Democratic Rep. Les Gara has — without luck — asked the Alaska State Troopers and the Palin's appointed attorney general to investigate whether the McCain-Palin campaign urged anyone to ignore their subpoenas. Under state law, to "induce a witness to be absent" from an official proceeding to which they've been summoned is second-degree witness tampering.

But even Gara, a recently outspoken critic of Palin, said he doesn't want such matters preoccupying the government.

"There are much more important things in this state than rehashing Troopergate," Gara said. "We all have to sit down and let bygones be bygones, but it's going to take some conversations."

Palin in line for big book deal?

Posted by Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian November 18, 2008 08:58AM

Forget the argument over whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is the savior of the Republican Party or merely a drag on it. What's important, for her bottom line at least, is that she has become a bona fide celebrity.

And that means she's in line for a big book deal, according to the Times of London. Maybe even $7 million.

Palin wants God to show her way to White House

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Defeated Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said she hopes God will "show her the way" before she decides on any future bid for the White House.

The Alaska governor declined to say whether she was planning to run for the US presidency in four years, stating in an exclusive interview Monday with the Fox News Channel that 2012 remained too far off.

"I can't predict what's going to happen a day from now, much less four years from now," Palin said in the interview.
However the devoutly religious 44-year-old mother-of-five said that if God wanted her to run for the highest office, she hoped to be shown the way.

"You know, I have -- faith is a very big part of my life. And putting my life in my creator's hands -- this is what I always do," said Palin, who served as running mate to Senator John McCain.

"I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is," she added.

"Even if it's cracked up a little bit, maybe I'll plow right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it, but don't let me miss an open door.

"And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

Palin's faith was scrutinized during the election campaign after an Internet video surfaced showing her being blessed by a Kenyan witch-hunter in a 2005 service at a Pentecostal church in Alaska.

In a separate interview with the Anchorage Daily News she blamed President George W. Bush's administration for the defeat of the McCain-Palin ticket in last week's election.

"I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a 10 trillion dollar debt in a Republican administration?" Palin told the paper.

"So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could.
"It's amazing that we did as well as we did."

In Monday's wide-ranging interview with Fox News, Palin also appeared to admit for the first time allegations made by anonymous aides to running mate John McCain that she had "gone rogue" during the election campaign.

In the final weeks of the election, reports of tensions between Palin and McCain's advisers emerged, with unidentified sources alleging she had routinely disregarded their advice and made unscripted remarks.

"But being quite independent, just like John McCain is also, yes, maybe there is some characterizing of me going rogue when once in a while I would say something that -- hey, I said it from the heart," Palin said.

"I believed in going off script once in a while in some of the rallies in order to really reiterate, perhaps, something that I believed about John McCain."

"Maybe it wasn't written in the script, but so what? Geez, if this is all going to be so scripted and kind of like a movie screen and we have to follow verbatim everything that somebody writes for you, I don't want any part of that. That's not who I am and that's not who John McCain is either."

Palin denied however that any of her comments had hurt McCain's campaign.

Meanwhile Palin also dismissed reports following last week's election suggesting she was unaware Africa was a continent, not a country, insisting the question had never arisen during discussions about the region.

"We discussed what was going on in Africa. And never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or is it a continent," Palin said.

"I just don't know about this issue. So I don't know how they took our one discussion on Africa and turned that into what they turned it into."

And Palin denied she ever asked for her much-publicized 150,000-dollar wardrobe during the campaign, saying it was purchased for her by the Republican party and that many of the clothes for her and her family were never worn.

"I did not order the clothes. Did not ask for the clothes," said Palin, saying she "would have been happy to wear my own clothes."

Given the serious issues facing the country, "that turned into a kind of odd campaign issue," she said.