Sarah Palin's Big, Sleazy Safari

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/election08/97207/sarah_palin

Sarah Palin’s Big, Sleazy Safari
By John Dolan, AlterNet. Posted September 2, 2008.

For most of us, zooming around in an airplane to shoot wolves sounds insane. For Sarah Palin, it's a "safari."

Most people had never heard of Sarah Palin when she was named the Republican VP nominee. But I'd been hearing her name all too often, because I belong to a group called Defenders of Wildlife -- and in her time as governor of Alaska, Palin has used her position as governor of Alaska to ruin the Alaskan wilderness in every way she could.

Her most recent "victory" came on Aug. 26, when Alaska's voters defeated Measure 2, an initiative that would have banned hunting wolves from airplanes for sport.

Palin organized a campaign against Measure 2 and funded it with $400,000 of state money. For most of us, the idea of zooming around in a private airplane over snowbound wilderness just for the chance to spot a terrified wild dog and blow it apart with a high-powered rifle is insane. But there's a whole culture out there in love with the idea. Palin did her part by playing the tired old Alaskan pioneer card, saying that lower-48 naysayers who dared to object to the idea of dive-bombing wildlife didn't "understand rural Alaska."

Alaska isn't really very hard to understand. It consists of a minority that loves the wilderness and an overwhelmingly Republican majority that wants to squeeze all the cash it can get out of the state before the oil dries up, the fish die out and the wildlife disappears. Nowhere else does the Republican formula of manipulating the suckers by playing on their silly hatreds and even sillier vanities play out more clearly than in Alaska.

To get an idea of Palin's core constituency, just go to the home page of Safari Club International, one of the groups that fought hardest against Measure 2 -- and is now gloating loudest over this proud victory.

Even the name is a little skewed -- "safari"? When was the last time you heard that word? Most people are trying hard to forget the "safari" era, when rich white jerks had themselves carried into the African wilderness by nameless black servants, at vast expense, to kill animals they could barely identify.

But for Palin's core constituency, "safari" is still the dream. And Measure 2 would have interfered with that dream, the dream of strafing social canids from a Cessna plane. Alaska politics runs on the vast opportunities for graft offered by a small, easily manipulated constituency addicted to subsidies and self-delusion. Alaskans like to imagine themselves the last pioneers, hardy individualists, etc. -- which makes them classic suckers for Republican propaganda. And they also like the petty cash that trickles down to them from the mining companies, timber companies and hunting guides who make the real money. Palin, an undistinguished part-time sportscaster on a local TV station, was a perfect non-threatening mouthpiece for the companies that want to gouge as much oil, ore and timber from Alaska as they can -- while it lasts.

Palin is totally consistent in her anti-environmental stance. She not only wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, but actually vowed to sue the EPA if it dared to declare polar bears an endangered species.

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[Karenina]

1. . .

:kick:

[dems_rightnow]

2. They hunt from airplanes up there?

Weird. I'd say I really don't understand Alaskans.

[dems_rightnow]

3. So I looked it up

And it's not as crazy as it sounds. A summary:

1. Aerial control only allowed when predators kill moose and caribou to a level of "biological emergency".
2. The aerial control is carried out by the Alaska Dept of Fish and Game- it's not for hunters.
3. It ends when the "prey" population decline ends.

So I guess it makes sense- though it's still a foreign concept in the lower 48.

[dems_rightnow]

4. I screwed that up.

The measure she help DEFEAT contained those very reasonable restrictions. I've changed my opinion on this once I woke up- she's goofy on this one.

[Canuckistanian]

7. So, she campaigned for SPORT airplane hunting

Not just for wildlife control, right?

[FourScore]

5. They shoot animals from airplanes???

That's sick.

[Lochloosa]

6. Video....3:30 in

http://current.com/items/88804691_aerial_hunting_of_wolves_in_alaska

[glitch]

8. Never Cry Wolf - excellent movie, worth renting. You will cry though. nt