Saturday, December 18, 2010

Sarah Palin often refers to Alaska as "America's Fort Knox" and claims it to be one of the "richest states." But REAL Alaskans do not see it that way.

Yesterday I post an interview that the Grizzled Mama did with Bill O'Reilly.

In the interview Palin once again makes the claim that Alaska is "America's Fort Knox."  This caught the attention of my friend Dennis Zaki who had been filming in rural Alaska back in 2009, before Palin quit as Governor.

Here is what he heard from the native Alaskans that he talked to about Sarah Palin.


Alaska Natives speak out about Sarah Palin from Dennis Zaki on Vimeo.

Now remember this is a woman who visited Haiti just ONCE and then suggested that America needed to do more by sending "airlifts" to help those poor destitute people. 

Well while she was our Governor she did NOTHING to help the Native community here is Alaska as they struggled through some of the harshest times in their recent memory. And when she finally flew out to "help" by bringing them cookies of all things, THIS is how she treated the people suffering in her state.

Just a reminder for anybody buying into Palin's new media image.

43 comments:

  1. Olivia7:04 AM

    Well, you know, it's Sarah Palin's Alaska so apparently she thinks she IS Alaska or it is HER Alaska and since she is quite wealthy, it all falls into place. Alaska is one of the richest states because she is rich.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:08 AM

    Isn't Fort Knox America's Fort Knox?

    What am i missing, here?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7:14 AM

    MSM is spineless.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Chenagrrl7:19 AM

    Bravo. I didn't know if I remembered her hitching a ride with the relief agency that finally got the fuel to the western villages. Was that Samaritan's Purse?

    If she really was familiar with Alaska, some of the modest discomforts of Haiti wouldn't shock her as they seemed to.

    The extremes no one should have to endure.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous7:22 AM

    If she's so concerned with the needs of Haiti, why doesn't she donate?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous7:35 AM

    You can't honestly expect us to believe that she needs a $40K+ hunting trip to stock her freezer.

    I get that hunting is a way of life for a lot of people. In exceptionally remote areas, yeah, you have to hunt for your food.

    Do you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so?

    I'm gonna go ahead and say no. No! If you have to hunt for your food, you probably have a really nice (or maybe not so nice) rifle, some cold weather gear, and ammo. Maybe a few other accessories that make catching dinner a little easier.

    You do not charter a plane, waaait ... scratch that, charter three planes to get you to your $250-a-night (per person) "camp" and then to your hunting spot. All told, the cost to get to the 300-pound caribou and back home was roughly $42,000. Forty-two thousand dollars. That's more than most of Alaska makes in an entire year!

    This doesn't show what life is like in Alaska. It doesn't give us insight into how people in extreme rural areas get their food. Nope.

    All it shows is that despite all her country living claims and gosh-darnit good humor, Sarah Palin has no clue what rural life is like. And probably no clue about what "normal" life is like at all.

    http://thestir.cafemom.com/food_party/113905/sarah_palin_her_42k_trip

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous7:37 AM

    Palin doesn't show how real Alaskans live

    I love Alaska. My husband lived there over 50 years and I lived there for 34. We are, however, annoyed at the depiction presented by Sarah Palin's very distorted misrepresentation of Alaska in her reality show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska."

    Her claims that most Alaskans get around by floatplane and every Alaskan has worked a slime line, gutting fish, are laughable. That's like saying everyone in Wisconsin lives on a dairy farm and works in a cheese factory.

    First, Wasilla is not wilderness. It's a small bedroom community close to Anchorage. The majority of Alaskans live in Anchorage amidst choking traffic, gangs, crime and high prices, all the usual problems of a city of 300,000 people.

    Alaska is beautiful with access to wilderness. That fishing trip they took, hundreds of miles from Wasilla, would cost thousands. Strategic camera angles made it look like a bear was extremely close. If it were, Sarah ("Mamma Grizzly") would or should have been concerned for her cub and that of a neighbor.

    Regarding Kate Gosselin's camping fiasco, there are many places to camp without flying to bear-infested locations.

    The Palins' 600-mile trip to bag a caribou to put organic food on the table again would cost a bundle for the rest of us.

    The claims Palin is a rootin' tootin', gun totin' independent woman carving out a living in the wilderness are greatly exaggerated. Her not-so-subtle political statements are actually comical, especially those about not wanting government involvement. Over one-third of the Alaskan economy is dependent on federal funding.

    http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20101218/APC0601/12180335/Letters-Palin-doesn-t-show-how-real-Alaskans-live#ixzz18TwhtWd6


    http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20101218/APC0601/12180335/Letters-Palin-doesn-t-show-how-real-Alaskans-live

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous7:38 AM

    "Not as long as Sarah Palin is out there."

    http://themoderatevoice.com/wordpress-engine/files//2010/12/87046_600.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous7:46 AM

    Wow this is devastating. The way they understate their comments make them hit so much harder. America needs to hear from people that were actually "governed" by Palin.

    ReplyDelete
  10. ManxMamma7:47 AM

    Her treatment of the Native People is what should bring her down. She is despicable.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous7:53 AM

    Who was Sarah Palin referring to when she used the term Artic Arabs?

    Sarah are they rich Alaskans just like the Palins?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous7:54 AM

    I vote progressive. If minorities want help or rights they must get the vote out, and vote progressive and against the bigotry of the right. I only have one vote. I am doing my best. I just watched the dream act voted down on cspan. If there is going to be a change, we must put more democrats in office.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous7:54 AM

    Is the Grifter Compound Alaska's Fort Knox?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous7:55 AM

    Does anybody know if Samaritans purse gets money from Bush's faith based initiative?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sarah boasts of feeding her children "organic" meat. Like she is the Mother Earth and Alaska provides...she just has to go hunt.
    Of course, this is pure BS. But on the flip side she brings sugar cookies to events so she can appear superior to the nanny government.

    Please someone expose her so that this abomination and poor excuse for a woman will just go away.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous7:57 AM

    Hey, Caribou Barbie... If you're so concerned about Haiti, why don't ou get after the people in your own party who are holding up the relief effort?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Anonymous8:02 AM

    http://hubpages.com/hub/How-Sarah-Palin-Became-Governor-of-Alaska

    Sarah couldn't even fundamentally change Alaska. She taxed the hell out of its only Industry, big oil, enough to make her CEO of one of the richest State's in the country heading into an Wall Street collapse - but stifled her supposed "incentivising business" philosophy.

    Her replacement as the State's Chief Executive had to perform a mea culpa to the Oil Industry by reversing her heavy-handed ACES law.

    You can ask Palin almost anything and she'll end up on Alaska's constitution and her beliefs that the best government is small and that competition is good, and what an honor it would be to serve you. And it works.

    She hasn't changed her M.O. since running for city council, Mayor and Governor. Now as a Tea Party Republican reformist, she promises to go back to constitutional and fiscal conservative foundations and that somehow, is a breath of fresh air and new energy, even though the same thing has been said in every elections cycle. But because it comes from her lips, it appears new and different, because her smile beguiles and belies her sick, twisted, power hungry heart.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Anonymous8:06 AM

    Thank you Dennis Zaki for documenting the point of view of Real Alaskans.
    Sarah Palin seems so selfish and heartless. There really must be a mental disorder affecting her.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous8:14 AM

    When the Native Alaskans were starving and cold, is it true Sarah Palin brought them cookies?

    How often did the happy homemaker/baker Sarah Palin visit the cold starving Native Alaskans?

    Did Sarah Palin share any of the caribou she killed in Alaska with the starving cold Native Alaskans?

    How about the fish she clubs in Alaska, did Sarah Palin share any of her fish with the cold starving Native Alaskans?

    Did Sarah Palin take the starving cold Native Alaskans and their children camping in Alaska?

    When Sarah Palin did all these things above like we seen in Sarah Palin's Alaska, did it only happen in the movies? Is Sarah Palin an actor? If she is, I do not want to see anymore of her movies? I rather have someone just give my Native Alaskan family a helping just to get through the winter.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Anonymous8:18 AM

    OT--One thing Sarah and her Repubs don't understand is there are people who will never thrive and prosper because they simply cannot. There are many people with mental health issues. Even with medicine, they just can't. There's no "pull up your bootstraps" for them and never will be.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous8:26 AM

    Hey Sarah how about ya bringing some cameras and a video crew from FOX or TLC with ya the next time you film Alaska for your show $P's Alaska or the next time ya visit Native Alaskans. Hopefully you will bring more than cookies with ya? Maybe some of that caribou and fish you are so good at killing? What ya say?

    ReplyDelete
  22. Anonymous8:27 AM

    shes putting a call out to her 'ilk' to come on up! to AK and pan for gold.

    AK is nearly out of nat gas, pipelines running near empty.
    questionable how much oil is left also.
    AK has trees, yes.
    ice, yes.
    snow, yes.

    commercial fishing takes all the catch. what else makes it 'fort knox'?
    babies?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous8:58 AM

    Should you find yourself wishing that the state's next governor had some more-than-passing connection to Alaska Natives, Palin's got that covered, too. She doesn't support a Native preference for subsistence - she's “pro-subsistence for all Alaskans,” she says - but her husband is part Yupik. At the discussion at Traditions Restaurant in Anchorage last week, when talked turned to rural women's issues, more than once Palin brought up her grandmother-in-law, Lena Andree, a one-time Bristol Bay Native Corporation Elder of the Year.

    It's important to her that her four children stay attached to their Native roots, Palin said, adding that she's learned much from village elders. “My heart is in rural Alaska,” she said. As she spoke she was sitting at the head of the table clad in a slick black suit, in hose and heels, her hair just so, her lips perfectly lined - and a roomful of women, many of them Native, nodded in agreement.

    http://hubpages.com/hub/How-Sarah-Palin-Became-Governor-of-Alaska

    Palin and Village Outreach was as superficial as her knowledge on running a business, managing a city and sitting on a highly technical Oil & Gas Commission.

    Much of Alaska off-the-grid experiences harsh living conditions. Look at the water and sewer statistics. Honey buckets still are the prevailing systems in most Native villages. Suicide, crippling social pathologies of a struggling acclimating culture and other preventable deaths plague Todd's people. Sarah's done NOTHING to improve life for rural Alaska.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous8:58 AM

    Early on in her governorship in December of 2006, Palin went to the Southwestern community of New Stuyahok, in part to find out why the Yup'ik village of 450 residents experienced at least five alcohol-related deaths that year. Palin said her "attention to the rural areas won't wane while she's in big cities." She was joined by Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, coincidentally the single Alaska Native serving as a commissioner under her Administration.
    Village officials hoped Palin's visit represented a chance to illustrate broader problems such as the strained resources villages of similar size face. Villages need more than just a review of a single problem; rather, towns with limited revenue streams require financial help for services such as public safety. Most villages have no doctors, police, libraries, roads, or water and sewer systems. There is more than just unemployment in villages, but underemployment, as the lack of typical municipal or township infrastructure and service industry that supports it is unable to provide jobs.
    The disappearance of the state's revenue sharing and municipal assistance programs under the Murkowski Administration combined with rising energy prices exacerbated the financial problems in such villages. As is customary of native communities, most speakers did not request government help, but Palin said it was clear that the state needed to play a role in creating economic opportunities. "I want our state resource wealth trickled to communities, not used to create larger state government," she said.
    Palin returned in June of 2007 with Commissioner Monegan, this time, he told the audience he worked on legislation that would raise wages for village public safety officers. Pitiful pay and inadequate back-up for the first-responders has been criticized as being so bad it turns off applicants. Palin did not back up the Commissioner's increased funding request, and amid ethics controversy, dismissed the Commissioner under the bristling differences of funding and policy priorities.
    The only seeming result from this entreaty was supporting the creation of a new faith-based non-profit company to serve villages and appoint the director, a Wasilla minister, onto the Statewide suicide prevention council. Utilizing the chronically underfunded regional Native health corporations that are the first responders should have been a natural move, but instead, the new non-profit went after a competitive $1 million dollar grant to reinvent the wheel and establish yet another program without cultural relevance.
    Palin has voided some crucial funds that Alaska Natives traditionally use. One, the WIC (Women, Infants, Children) Program, would have provided breast pumps and nutrition support to low-income rural women, for a total cost of $15,480. Another, the Cook Inlet Housing Authority's student housing and day care facility project, would have built a childcare facility and family-style housing units for students pursuing vocational education in Anchorage, most of whom come from rural areas and experience a high turn-over rate due to culture shock and lack of rural outreach.
    On the positive side, Palin has nearly doubled state spending to combat fetal alcohol syndrome and has increased spending on adult mental health services by 59%. However, she shifted about $1.25 million in state money to faith-based programs that provide social services, again, in a State where regional and statewide Tribal health and non-profit social service systems already provide (albeit at a deficit) such services.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous8:59 AM

    On Anderson Cooper's AC360 program (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/10/01/ac.palin.latest.cnn) guest Republican Strategist Bay Buchanan took V.P. Candidate Sarah Palin's successful evasion to a question by CBS news correspondent Katie Couric in regard to what magazines or newspapers she reads to keep up with domestic and foreign developments and policies - Palin said she reads "Most of them, All of 'em, any of 'em" but she deftly shifted attention away to the perception that people think "Alaska isn't a foreign country where its kind of suggested that . . .wow, how can you keep in touch with what the rest of what Washington, D.C. may be thinking?"

    So Bay was offended by the question because the 'Media' looks upon Alaska like its some sort of a Third World Nation. Now it seems an Anti-Alaskan sentiment is now being battled (outside of the Bridge to Nowhere?) I thought it funny that James Carville dismissed the lack of informational sources with what the Internet provides in this day and age. How easy is it to get sustained access or download technical applications in remote villages?

    Interestingly enough, another AC360 story (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/10/01/ac.palin.latest.cnn) had a reporter dispatched to Little Diomede and - yay residents, bless their hearts, they were so simple in saying no Governor has ever set foot on their island or addressed their proximity and relationship with Russia. They also said they didn't know she was on the national ticket because they do NOT get television news since there is no TV. The reporter did site that the poverty level was above 40% and had no running water and *ugh they usually dump their trash bags directly into the sea - that will inevitably float over to Russia.

    Bay is right, we aren't a Third World Nation, because we are the Fourth, a phenomena of being a lesser-developed State in a First World Nation. A wealthy, oil producing State with a Governor who is an expert on Energy Issues no less. Can we still explain why we have to ship petroleum products from Seattle so we can pay upwards of $10 a gallon to fill our ATV / sno-go tanks and heat our homes?

    Ironically, despite all the hard-won earmarks for more water and sewer infrastructure in our villages to combat disease and improve quality of life, the exorbitant energy costs are driving people to duct-tape their toilet seats shut. It's back to the honey-buckets because that unsanitary practice only involves unpleasant labor in hauling and dumping into sewer lagoons. It's easier to pay the heating and light bill, and relegate our newly outfitted bathrooms to window-dressing for those industrious 5-gallon buckets.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous9:07 AM

    Unless it is Todd's grandmother, Sarah loathes to acknowledge, shake hands or hug natives unless Real people or the press are watching.

    Oh look. Sarah is so nice, she's holding that little Native baby. Smile for the camera.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Anonymous9:12 AM

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/us/06land.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=alaska&st=nyt&oref=slogin

    Everything in this article, though not explicitly about politics, backhandedly insults everything an arrogant half-term Governor stands for.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Gryphen, I think you misquoted Sistah Sarah, just like the rest of the lamestream media. Im pretty sure she said that Americans could help impoverished disaster-stricken Haitians by providing them with "facelifts", not "airlifts"...

    (the sooner the dual-teen pregnancies in the clan is made public, the sooner we can all go back to ignoring this horrible woman. That is what I want for Christmakwanzukah this year....)

    ReplyDelete
  29. Alaska is one of the most socialist states in the Union. The have the highest per capita of federal aid and they collect money from the oil companies and give it back to their citizens. Talk about income redistribution. Alaska tops them all, and Sarah increased it.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Anonymous9:22 AM

    Sarah boasts of feeding her children "organic" meat.

    IS THAT HOW SARAH'S DAUGHTERS WILLOW AND BRISTOL GOT SO DAMN FAT?

    NOTE TO PALIN GIRLS, DO NOT EAT A WHOLE CARIBOU IN ONE SITTING? PACE YOURSELFS, MAYBE TRY IT IN TWO SITTINGS.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Anonymous9:28 AM

    Any truth to the rumors that she bought a home in the Phoenix area? She has a rabid fan base in Arizona.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Anonymous9:58 AM

    Anonymous at 8:02 - I thank you for so aptly describing this despicable woman. Your comments are spot on.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Anonymous10:21 AM

    Which states get the most federal money?

    The government spent $9,184 per person last year. But the money was not distributed evenly among the 50 states.


    1. Virginia ($15,256 spent per capita)

    2. Maryland ($13,829)

    3. Alaska ($13,730).

    4. Kentucky ($12,242)

    5. New Mexico ($12,017)

    The Bottom 5:

    46. Minnesota ($7,326)

    47. Oregon ($7,264)

    48. Wisconsin ($7,132)

    49. Nevada ($6,638)

    50. Utah ($6,255)

    ReplyDelete
  34. Sarah#Todd#Palin will move to each State and then do a TLC show. Think of all the fun! SarahPalin's Florida, Rhode Island, etc... Lol

    Is it true that she'll try to slip into real politicts by moving to another State?

    ReplyDelete
  35. Anonymous10:57 AM

    Yesterday afternoon I donated to Dennis' fundraising effort for this production. I notice that the numbers haven't gone up since.

    This is a worthy cause, fellow IM readers. It's easy to donate, goes through Amazon, so if you're registered at Amazon it's a piece of cake.

    This could be a wonderful thing for Alaska, for Alaskan Natives, for politics. How can certain people keep telling lies when they've been repudiated on film?

    Help Dennis, Alaska & Alaskan Natives!

    TXSMR

    ReplyDelete
  36. Anonymous11:03 AM

    I understand there are some so-called conservatives desperate to believe she's authentic, but I really hope one day they wake up and see some of the obvious signs that she's anything but genuine. I mean, if she cares for people and Alaska as much as she claims, she would have been determined to stay in her post as governor and fight it out for her constituents. Why do her worshippers believe she quit? Because God is calling her to do something greater, because she was hampered by lawsuits and would have drained some of the state's resources in fighting them. Please...

    It's not as if you have to look hard to see that she's bogus. It's plain as day. It's right there in front of you.

    I guess you have to be really stupid to understand what they see. I just don't get it.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Anonymous11:04 AM

    Just curious, can anybody tell me who is:
    1. The richest person in Alaska that did not strike gold or oil?

    2. The richest family in Alaska that did not strike gold or oil?

    3. The richest senile person in Alaska?

    Maybe Alaska is Fort Knox to the hill billy trailer park runner-up grifter queen of the most fucked up family in Alaska, but to the rest of us, we work for a living.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Anonymous11:19 AM

    Oh Sarah, hate to embarass you again, but you need to be enlightened:

    Contrary to your statement, Fort Knox is a United States Army post in Kentucky south of Louisville and north of Elizabethtown. Fort Knox is not in Alaska, sorrrrry.

    Contrary to your statement, North Korea is not our friend. However, they may be your friends.

    Contrary to your statement, Ronald Reagan did not go to Eureka College in California.

    Contrary to your statement, there is no fishing in that cess pool we call Lake Lucille.

    Contrary to your statement, there is no swimming in that cess pool we call Lake Lucille.

    Contrary to your national statement in Washington, DC, you did not raise a combat vet. Track was in the Army, but his discharge papers did not show he received a Combat Infantry Badge of honor. Track was in Iraq, but never served in combat.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Anonymous11:27 AM

    RG said...
    Which states get the most federal money?

    The government spent $9,184 per person last year. But the money was not distributed evenly among the 50 states.


    1. Virginia ($15,256 spent per capita)

    2. Maryland ($13,829)

    3. Alaska ($13,730).


    Hey RG, ya forgot, the Palins, over the years received aid from native Alaskans, hockey rink builders, oil companies, contractors, Mystik Oil (foreign oil company),SarahPac, Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund, Alaska Fund Trust, Canada, Canadian Health Care and North Korea to name a small few.

    ReplyDelete
  40. honeybabe11:44 AM

    thank you for all the comments here. hopefully a lot of viewers will send this viral. the world needs to know how alaskans feel about the palin we know only too well. go dennis go!

    ReplyDelete
  41. Anonymous12:26 PM

    I can't see the video, instead there is an ad. This has been happening a lot on your site. I'm using Firefox and have all the updates. Hope you can get this fixed.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Anonymous3:25 PM

    And remember, $carah's grandson doesn't need his daddy to pay for no stinkin' health insurance. The IHS, you know, public health care, is just fine as her well paid AK princess aka Bitchtol told teh court in the custody papers.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Anonymous4:13 PM

    Only 20% of the expected crowd at the Anchorage Costco signing? Tankin' fast. Crash and burn. Gettin' older by the minute and lookin' it, $carah. Agin' but not at all gracefully. So hard to get up in the morning when the mirror is your worst enemy, isn't it?

    ReplyDelete

Don't feed the trolls!
It just goes directly to their thighs.