Palin e-mails released

[JimH52]

http://www.wkow.com/Global/story.asp?S=14880395

We can call it Princess Diary III

These should be interesting.

[Absolute]

I am amazed that she is actually reasonably coherent in most of these.

Seriously.

[Sam Stone]

I'm amazed that the media is actually presenting some of these E-mails as 'news'. The front page of the Guardian has three articles on this. Their 'liveblogging' the sifting of E-mail. The Washington Post and the New York times are crowd-sourcing the work, hoping to get a bunch of freelance activists to dig up dirt. It's all really kind of pathetic.

I've looked at what they consider to be 'interesting' E-mails, and it's just bloody ridiculous.

For example, the Washington Post breathlessly reported this E-mail:

On Aug. 2, 2008, she wrote to a government official that the day her fifth son, Trig, was born, should count as a work day.

“How is it reflected in my TAS the couple of days I was ‘off duty’ when I had Trig?” she wrote. “April 18, the day he was born, I signed a bill into law and conducted a few State actions (and that should be recorded for the record).”

Oh my God! That's news worthy of a front page headline!

CNN is is running this big scoop:

E-mails: Palin moved to tie oil scandal to ousted rival

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin moved quickly to link a key figure in a corruption scandal that rocked the state's political establishment to her defeated predecessor, newly released documents show.

"FYI -- I've asked Frank Bailey to help me track down soem [sic] evidence of past administration's dealing with Bill Allen," Palin wrote on May 8, 2007, a day after Allen pleaded guilty to bribery, extortion and conspiracy.

Think about that headline - it suggests something nefarious, like Palin is attempting to smear someone with charges she knows are false. But buried below the incendiary headline is this:

The document is one of the roughly 24,000 pages of records from Palin's administration released by Alaska state officials on Friday.

Allen had been the CEO of the Alaska oilfield services company VECO, and federal prosecutors accused him of leading a scheme to bribe top lawmakers in exchange for favorable state action.

The day after Allen's guilty plea, Palin sent e-mails to staffers asking for information on his ties to her predecessor, Frank Murkowski.

Uh, if a guy is indicted in a scheme to bribe officials in the previous government, shouldn't the sitting governor ask staffers to dig up what information they had on that?

The whole thing is a massive fishing expedition that in the end is going to wind up blowing back in the media's face and making Palin even stronger. Good work, guys.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Wish in one hand, shit in the other Sam. I don't have the slighhtest doubt that that the media will easily find lots and lots of stupid.

If this was Obama the media would do the same thing, by the way. There isn't any conspiracy against poor Sarah.

[Frank]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

The whole thing is a massive fishing expedition ...

Absolutely. 'Course, they've got 25,000 printed pages to dig through. Still, I expect that all the really good stuff is in the emails that weren't released.

That said, Palin has long ago blown any chance she had to build on her early record as a reasonably competent governor. (Which, in fairness, she was.) Nothing they find in the emails is going to make her stronger after everything she's done since then.

[JimH52]

Originally Posted by Frank

Absolutely. 'Course, they've got 25,000 printed pages to dig through. Still, I expect that all the really good stuff is in the emails that weren't released.

That said, Palin has long ago blown any chance she had to build on her early record as a reasonably competent governor. (Which, in fairness, she was.) Nothing they find in the emails is going to make her stronger after everything she's done since then.

Agreed! Rmember, she used yahoo accounts to do Government business to avoid scrutiny. She might be ignorant, but she ain't stupid...or something like that.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Yeah, all the Tropergate shit, for isntance, she made sure she ordered her staffers to talk about all her illegal and unethical shit on private emails so they wouldn't be subject to FOIA.

i'm sure there's plenty of stupid on the official record, though. I remember a while back when an email was publicized in which she referred to herself as God. There's probably more shit like that.

[Simplicio]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

I'm amazed that the media is actually presenting some of these E-mails as 'news'.

Agree its pretty silly, though I think the reasons are largely inertia. Several news organizations have been trying to get the emails released since back in 2008, when Palin was still relevant. Now, umpteen jillion dollars in lawyer fees later, they have them, and have to wring a few stories out of them to justify the expense.

[Chronos]

It'll take a while to go through all of these e-mails. They're publishing stories now on the juiciest bits they've found so far, but that doesn't necessarily mean that those are the juiciest bits in the entire pile.

And why on Earth are all of them in hardcopy form? It makes no sense to store information that originated electronically exclusively in a non-electronic form. I suppose I can maybe see the point in keeping filing cabinets full of paper in addition to the electronic copy, but did nobody ever think to burn a CD or two as well?

[Boyo Jim]

Originally Posted by Chronos

It'll take a while to go through all of these e-mails. They're publishing stories now on the juiciest bits they've found so far, but that doesn't necessarily mean that those are the juiciest bits in the entire pile.

And why on Earth are all of them in hardcopy form? It makes no sense to store information that originated electronically exclusively in a non-electronic form. I suppose I can maybe see the point in keeping filing cabinets full of paper in addition to the electronic copy, but did nobody ever think to burn a CD or two as well?

I've been going through them. They are heavily redacted. So no, there won't be anything of real interest in them.

As to paper copies -- honestly, I think the state did that just to fuck with the news media.

[Recovering Republican]

looking at some of the summaries on MSNBC- no smoking guns yet.

Looks like she was pretty obsessed with evening the score with her brother in law, but we all kind of knew that already.