Alaska cuts loose incredibly expensive natural gas pipeline consultant.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:  

A highly paid attorney who earned more than $850,000 working on Alaska’s proposed gas pipeline project no longer works for the state and is unlikely to return, Gov. Bill Walker said Friday. 

Rigdon Boykin, a commercial attorney, earned up to $120,000 monthly working as a negotiator for the state before his contract with the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. was terminated Nov. 30. 

Boykin was paid $750,000 by the corporation, plus another $100,000 by Walker’s office under a separate contract. 

In an interview Friday morning, Walker said the state had “changed up the team a bit.”

The article goes on to quote Walker's defense of Boykin's work, and his claim that the state "got it's money's worth" out of  Boykin

Bullshit!

The evidence for that, according to Governor Walker, is a commitment from BP and ConocoPhilips that IF a pipeline were constructed they would negotiate sales of the gas. That's like promising to build a stable for my unicorn once I capture it.

Never gonna happen.

I have been hearing about this fabled natural gas pipeline for almost forty years now.

I have also heard that Jesus is coming back.

I assume both of these events will take place on the same day.

Our dearly departed friend Joe McGinnis wrote perhaps the definitive argument for why there will never be a gas pipeline in his article Pipe Dreams:

The first thing I learned about the pipeline was that the reason nobody had built it in 30 years was that nobody could have made any money by doing so. Here’s how it works: You decide to build a pipeline to carry gas from Point A to Point B, and you spend a couple of years scoping out a route and putting together a cost estimate. Then you have what in the gas business is called an open season, when you try to persuade whoever has gas to commit in advance to shipping it through your pipeline for, let’s say, 25 years. Once you’ve signed up your shippers, you go to a bank, and the bank loans you the money you need to build the pipeline. Once you have your financing, you go to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington and ask for a permit. They check your shipping commitments, your financing, and about a zillion other things, and if they like the way things look, they issue the permit. Then you build the line, and the gas starts to flow and keeps flowing for 25 years or more, and everybody makes a ton of money. 

But with natural gas selling for less than $2 per million British thermal units, or MMBtu—which it had been for about 50 years—there was no way to make money building a $40 billion pipeline to carry it all the way from the North Slope of the Brooks Range in Alaska to Chicago, or Green Bay, Wisconsin, or Burnt Chitlin, Louisiana. Only in the past 10 years did the price climb above $3 per MMBtu, the lowest possible number at which an Alaskan pipeline might be feasible, according to experts in the natural-gas sector. (After spiking to more than $12 last summer, by February gas was down to about $4.75.)

Currently natural gas prices are at around 2.8 and the market is essentially saturated, which means there is NO demand for more natural gas pipelines.

That is just a lie they tell to the Alaskan men, much like "Yes I think back hair DOES make you look sexy."

Well I for one am tired of hearing this particular line of bullshit, and now that I hear how much this Boykin guy earned from sitting on his ass thinking up reasons to get paid, I am even MORE tired of it.

It looks like a certain half term Governor is about to lose the only thing she ever accomplished while in office.

From Forbes.com:

Leading state lawmakers introduced legislation Friday to abandon a centerpiece of former Gov. Sarah Palin's administration: a state-sanctioned effort to advance a major natural gas pipeline.

The measure from Alaska House Republicans underscored the impatience and skepticism that many lawmakers have expressed about the current process and a belief the state is no closer than it was several years ago to realizing the long-hoped-for line.

Under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act championed by fellow Republican Palin, the state promised TransCanada Corp. ( TRP - news - people ) up to $500 million to advance a line. TransCanada won the exclusive license in 2008.

This truly was the ONLY thing that Palin could brag about doing while she was Governor. 

Everywhere she goes THIS is what she uses to prove that she is an energy "expert" and that she has any credibility at all when it come to getting big things done.  Without it all Palin has to attract audiences is her fake Christian bonfides, her son's military service ( Which did NOT take him to the front line, despite her contention that he is a "combat veteran.") and the little Down Syndrome baby she adopted to prove her pro-life credibility.

Let's face it if the Republican lawmakers pass this legislation it will do almost as much damage to Palin's reputation and political aspiration as the shooting in Arizona did.

The OTHER Palin story of the day. The AP gets access to MORE Palin e-mails.

The other day the Associated Press got their hands on some interesting Palin administration e-mails concerning the planning behind the natural gas pipeline in Alaska.

From the AP:

E-mail exchanges also show at-times close communication between staff and representatives of the Canadian company Palin picked to build the line. In June 2008, after her recommendation of the company and less than two months before the Legislature voted on the contract, Palin agreed to host people involved with the project at her home for a salmon feast and "informal gasline chat."

"There's a Costco in Juneau, if you know what I mean," Palin wrote. "And my family is quite capable of setting out food and cleaning up afterwards."

The correspondence is contained in more than 2,000 pages of e-mails between Palin's office and others surrounding the pipeline process. The e-mails were released to The Associated Press this week under a public records request filed in 2008, when Palin was the Republican vice presidential nominee. Palin resigned as governor last year.

It appears fairly obvious, and of no surprise to most of us, that Palin was only going to work with a company that was not part of the "old boy's network". But that also meant she did not get the best deal, or the best people to do the job.  She chose the company willing to kiss her ass and treat her like she might have a clue as to what she was doing. In the end of course, the deal stalled.  Just like the experts always knew that it would.

Some e-mails suggest the administration closely watched how its position was playing in the media and was sensitive to any criticism.

In one exchange dated May 5, 2008, Revenue Commissioner Pat Galvin, a Palin administration official, questioned why Palin would take a trip "back east" that month, on the cusp of the special legislative session Palin called to consider her eventual recommendation that TransCanada receive the license to build the pipeline and up to $500 million from the state.

I do not remember just  what Sarah was supposed to be doing on this date (and if any of you know feel free to weigh in) but I do want to point out that this was supposedly only 17 days after Sarah gave birth to a premature baby with Down's syndrome.  So besides leaving during a critical time in getting this gas line deal worked out she also left during what should have been an important time in the life of her newborn son.

And possibly the least surprising revelation of all is that there were reams of e-mails that were deemed protected by the attorney-client privilege.


The AP requested different groups of e-mails, including from June 1, 2007, and Dec. 1, 2007, to cover the submission period for companies vying for the pipeline contract. Only one, dated Nov. 30, 2007, was apparently included. Public records officer Linda Perez said she would look into why other e-mails weren't included.

E-mails released run into late 2008.

The governor's office also released a 72-page log detailing e-mails it was withholding for what it described as reasons including attorney-client or executive privilege. Subject lines on those e-mails included "Messaging/Strategy," "Myth Busting," and "Bad News.

In many ways this also relates to Palin's overreaction to her new neighbor Joe McGinniss.  EVERYTHING is about keeping the secrets secret.  Can you imagine just how much energy is expended by Sarah, her family, and her staff to keep those damn skeletons in the closet  where they belong?  It must be exhausting.

Joe Biden makes reference to simplicity of Palin's energy plan which inspires her ghostwriter to write him a note on Facebook.

Vice President Joe Biden showed up in New York state to provide a little support to the Democratic candidate for the Congressional seat that has received so much attention as of late.

He made a short speech in which he made this offhand remark:

“I like her. I really do – not a joke,” Mr. Biden later added. “The fact of the matter is Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was ‘drill baby drill.’ No. It’s a lot more complicated, Sarah, than ‘drill baby drill.’ ”

Essentially Biden pointed out what ALL Alaskans know to be a fact, that Sarah Palin knows NOTHING about energy development.

Apparently this angered Palin's Facebook ghostwriter who fired up her laptop and tapped out this response.

As the vice president knows, I have always advocated an all-of-the-above approach to American energy independence. Among other things, my alternative energy goal for Alaska sits at 50 percent because Alaska reached more than 20 percent during my term in office.

(What she fails to mention however is that less than seven months after introducing this plan she quit her job and left it up to others to move the ball forward. And while she was in office what did she really do to accomplish her goal?)

The Obama-Biden administration, on the other hand, recently announced a renewable goal of only 25 percent. However, domestic drilling should remain a top priority in order to meet America’s consumption and security needs.

The vice president’s extreme opposition to domestic energy development goes all the way back to 1973 when he opposed the Alaska pipeline bill. As Ann Coulter pointed out, “Biden cast one of only five votes against the pipeline that has produced more than 15 billion barrels of oil, supplied nearly 20 percent of this nation’s oil, created tens of thousands of jobs, added hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and reduced money transfers to the nation’s enemies by about the same amount.”This nonsensical opposition to American domestic energy development continues to this day.

(By the way let me take a moment to say "Thank you" to Joe Biden for voting against the oil pipeline. There were a lot of promises made to the Alaskan people by the oil companies before we allowed them to come up here and rape our land and not very damn many of them were kept. They NEVER provided the jobs promised to the native people whose land they took, and instead hired hundreds of people from the lower forty-eight who treated my state like a giant cash machine. They worked up here for two weeks on and two weeks off, and on the off weeks they were flown back to their homes to spend their oil money in places that were NOT Alaska. In the meantime they spilled 10.8 million gallons of oil in Prince William Sound and kept the settlement fight tied up in court for years while the boat captains, who depended on the now dead fish, lost their businesses and were forced to sell their fishing boats. In the thirty plus years since the construction of the pipeline we have seen the tough, weather hardened Alaskans become soft and portly on a steady diet of oil money and no state tax. We also found our politicians prostrating themselves for years in front of the oil giants and putting their needs ahead of the Alaskan citizens at every turn. So no, I do not believe that Joe Biden deserves to be vilified for his wariness of casting a yes vote in 1973.)

Apparently the Obama-Biden administration only approves of offshore drilling in Brazil, where it will provide security and jobs for Brazilians. This election is about American security and American jobs.

There’s one way to tell Vice President Biden that we’re tired of folks in Washington distorting our message and hampering our nation’s progress: Hoffman, Baby, Hoffman!

- Sarah Palin

No Joe Biden did NOT "distort" Sarah Palin's energy policy. Her claim that she "knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America" is a big steaming pile of moose shit. She does not know a damn thing about energy.

Palin pinned ALL of her political energy bona fides on her plan to build the mythical gas pipeline that inspired more GOP erections in Alaska than a whole truckload of Viagara. However as many more knowledgeable Alaskans realized, there was a reason that it had remained a myth. And as we all know Palin jumped ship before it crashed into the rocks of a huge natural gas surplus in the lower forty eight and new technology which makes it possible to remove natural gas from shale, leaving her successor, Sean Parnell, bailing like a maniac as her ship of natural gas dreams slowly sinks into obscurity.

Her claims of energy expertise were as empty as her promises to show up and give speeches around the country have turned out to be. Who in their right mind would even listen to somebody so inept that they cannot even post their OWN notes on Facebook?

KTUU presents "Palin's Wild Ride" Part two.

This is mostly a love note to Palin and her "leadership" concerning the establishment of AGIA.

However at the end of the video (and article) the reality of what has really been accomplished by Sarah Palin's attempts to get a gas pipeline built are dutifully laid out.

If this is truly to be Governor Palin's legacy than there will certainly be no statues built in her honor, or sport centers named after her. With the possible exception of the one in Wasilla.

Because those people are nuts!

(For some reason I cannot get the video to embed. Sorry. But you can watch it for yourself by clicking the title.)

Senator Mark Begich looks for signs of progress on Palin's promised gas pipeline and finds nothing.

Gov. Sarah Palin's commissioners on Wednesday blasted Alaska Sen. Mark Begich as "uninformed" after he expressed frustration that a natural gas pipeline to the Lower 48 hasn't moved forward.

This latest fight follows comments that Begich made earlier this week during a speech in Anchorage. The speech was mostly about Begich's recent trip to Afghanistan but he mentioned the gas pipeline, focusing primarily on his desire for President Obama to put it on "the national energy agenda."
He earned Palin's ire by citing his "frustration" that the proposed pipeline hasn't moved forward. He also said during the speech to business leaders that in "recent conversations with the president and his top advisers, there has been frustration expressed at the lack of progress on the Alaska gas line."
The governor's office responded Wednesday with a statement saying Palin's commissioners "are disappointed that Alaska's junior senator has failed to recognize the progress that has been made on one of the largest construction projects in North America." They urged Begich to keep up to speed on what's going on.

Uh oh! Somebody noticed that behind the smoke and mirrors Palin has done next to NOTHING to get work started on the "doomed to fail" gas pipeline project.

Time to unleash her pet "Palin-bots".

State revenue commissioner Pat Galvin and natural resources commissioner Tom Irwin also wrote Begich a letter saying they were "surprised and dismayed."

"We must believe that you are uninformed about the current situation in Alaska regarding this project," they wrote.

Aren't they cute? Look how anxious they are to jump through the flaming hoops held up by their "fearless leader".

Begich fired back through his spokeswoman, Julie Hasquet. She said Begich appreciates receiving the letter promising new information about gas pipeline progress "but we had a hard time finding any new information or progress."

"The senator will continue working in Washington and with project sponsors to get the project off high-center," Hasquet said.

Well the reason that Begich and his people had a "hard time finding any new information or progress" is because there is NO new information of progress.

Governor Palin is playing a game of hide the lack of progress, and like a street hustler she is simply hoping nobody will know which cup to look under to find that she has not done anything that will truly get this project off of the ground.

I applaud Mark Begich for calling her on her bullshit and hope that he keeps pushing so that all Alaskans will be made aware that the Governor is simply not to be trusted with things of this importance to both our state and to our country.

Governor Palin's gas pipeline, is simply a pipedream.

This opinion piece showed up in the ADN yesterday.

It very accurately describes the very thing I have been saying about this gas pipeline for many months, except this comes from Paul Jenkins who is a former columnist and editor with Voice of the Times, which was the only conservative voice left over when ADN became the only daily paper in Anchorage.

It took awhile, but lawmakers -- at least a few of them -- are getting itchy about Gov. Sarah Palin's Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. Your remember that bit of nonsense, don't you? It hands a Canadian company $500 million for little more than advice on building a $30 billion gas line to carry North Slope gas south. Oh, and obtaining a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission certificate for a line the company says it cannot build.

To put $500 million into perspective, if the government instead divvied up the money among last year's 610,000 Permanent Fund dividend recipients, the check would amount to $819 each, give or take a few cents. Not bad.

Republican Reps. Jay Ramras and Craig Johnson say the mutating fiscal moonscape and the increasing availability of natural gas in the Lower 48 have changed the economic equation. With gas and oil prices in the tank and supplies increasing, the $500 million investment at this point, they say, is shaky. Then there's that pesky AGIA provision that would require Alaska to pay TransCanada an additional $1 billion-plus if the state were to assist a competing proposal.

Their HCR 12 calls for the lovely Sarah P. and the attorney general, whoever that is nowadays, to review the "license" Alaska awarded TransCanada and get back to them in six months.

The lawmakers are right. Things have changed. A lot. In midsummer last year, when oil prices were gushing upwards through the $140-a-barrel mark, gas skyrocketed to more than $14 per thousand cubic feet. Since then, oil and gas prices have been in a tailspin. In December, when Alaska gave its "license" to Trans-Canada and promised the $500 million, natural gas prices at the Henry Hub pricing point hovered at about $6.50 Mcf. A few days ago, the price was at $3.77 Mcf.

It is easy to understand why Ramras, Johnson and others think a second look at AGIA is in order, and they are right, but in politics being right is not the same as being the winner. AGIA -- simple codification of the Palin administration's war on the oil industry -- is a case in point. It was a loser from Day One, but it passed the Legislature anyway, even with guys like Wally Hickel and Tony Knowles urging its defeat. Lawmakers, skittish then about Palin's popularity, now are leery of asking for a do-over because they fear public embarrassment for themselves and Alaska, and potential problems for a gas line down the road.

"What this resolution wants us to do is welsh out on a contract to build the largest project in North America," Democratic Rep. Les Gara told the Associated Press. "You can't behave like that and be viewed as a serious gas line partner."

Despite Gara's assertion to the contrary, AGIA is in no way, shape or form a pact to "build the largest project in North America" and, ignoring his pointed slur aimed at the Welsh, you get his gist about potential future problems. (Remember, this guy IS a conservative. So he is honor bound to take potshots at Les.) He is not alone in being nervous. As one astute observer put it recently, lawmakers figure: We passed it; we're stupid, why ask for more trouble? Why not just wait until a year from now for the open season and see what happens?

That may be fun, what with ConocoPhillips and BP's Denali pipeline project also under way. Surely you remember them? AGIA was designed to allow the state's selection of an independent company to build a gas line while forcing the oil industry to foot the bill. As an added slap in the face, the companies would have nothing to say about the line's construction or attendant costs. No wonder they started their own project.

Mind you, these outfits have gas, money and expertise. They are veritable shoo-ins for a FERC license. All they do not have is the phony and unnecessary state "license" and $500 million in state dough. They do not need them.

In the end, nobody expects TransCanada to beg, buy or borrow enough gas to fill a line. Nobody expects it to cobble together financing. Nobody expects FERC to grant it a license. Understandably, that agency has never smiled on a company with no gas, no contracts and no financing. On the horizon, if you look hard, is a train wreck of monumental proportions.

Yet the Palin administration -- which also opposes any review of AGIA -- remains cheery; you have to wonder why. It is, however, growing increasingly prickly about criticism as Palin's national prominence grows. Seemingly only minutes after Joe McGinniss, writing in Conde Nast's Portfolio.com, posited that Palin is the single biggest roadblock to the gas line's success, she offered the revelation that she, by golly, always has been for talking to producers about improving the gas tax climate. Really? Always, she says. Imagine lawmakers' surprise. Her statement seems to run counter to just about everything from her administration on the subject until this point.

Looking at this and the other silliness of the past few years I wonder sometimes whether we have not misread the tea leaves; whether the governor actually wants to build a gas line. If a line finally gets under way, if the dragons are slain, wouldn't she then have to be governor, with all the grinding minutiae that entails? What would she use to fuel the populism she hopes will catapult her into national office? After all, no war, no enemies, no glory and no whipping boys is a poor recipe for her style of us-against-them populism.

It finally occurred to me. We may never see a gas line. Maybe we were not supposed to.

Ahhh it seems that everybody is finally reaching the same conclusion that Andrew Halcro, and I, and a handful of others have reached long ago.

After having her faulty gas pipeline plans exposed on Portfolio.com Governor Sarah does a quick turnaround.

Gov. Sarah Palin surprised state legislators Wednesday by indicating she is willing to negotiate how much the state taxes natural gas in order to attract oil companies to a pipeline project.

"We are open to changes in the state's fiscal structure to allow this project to happen. ... We are open to whatever it takes to make sure that this project happens for our state and for our country," Palin told reporters. (Translation: "Uh oh! Somebody saw through my bullshit!")

Palin's comments came as she defended her approach to trying to secure a natural gas pipeline to the Lower 48. She's reacting to critics in and out of the Legislature. Two state representatives are pushing a resolution asking Palin to re-evaluate the state's award of a natural gas pipeline license to TransCanada, a Canadian pipeline firm. A writer in the business magazine Portfolio also this week wrote what Palin called a "hit piece" blaming her for the state not having a pipeline.

The headline on the story, by author Joe McGinniss, said: "Forget 'Drill, baby, drill.' Sarah Palin says she's building a $40 billion gas pipeline, which even President Obama wants. The only problem: It isn't there. And it's her fault."

"That headline was idiotic," Palin said. (And if ANYBODY understands idiocy it has to be Sarah Palin!)

Legislators were surprised to hear Palin express a willingness to put gas taxes on the table in discussions with the oil companies -- who control the huge North Slope gas reserves and are needed to make a pipeline project happen. But Palin said it has always been her position.

"That's the first I've heard of it," said Anchorage Republican Rep. Mike Hawker. "It contradicts what her people said in committee."

I guess I am supposed to be impressed that the Governor is now reevaluating things and learning to read the writing on the wall, but what I cannot help but notice is that she is simply reacting to bad publicity again.

Essentially you can make Sarah Palin do anything if you just point out something bad about her in the media. She just hates that!

Accuse her of not being Trig's mother, she tells the whole world her teenage daughter is pregnant. Show how vapid she is in a national television interview, she attacks the "gotcha" media. Make fun of her on a late night comedy show, she shows up as a guest to play herself. Start talking about the fact that her daughter supposedly gave birth but nobody has seen the baby, and you get the carefully planned Greta Van Susteren interview.

She is like a trained poodle. Just hold up the flaming hoop and notify the public that she is afraid of fire. Trust me she will jump through it.

I think I will start a rumor that Palin has breast implants. Maybe she will flash the camera. I know at least one cameraman who would be very happy to get that shot!

The Joe McGinnis article about Sarah Palin and her "Magical thinking" is a must read for anybody fascinated with Sarah Palin or worried about AGIA.

This article in Portfolio will answer several questions about Sarah Palin, her shaky grasp of reality, and how that affects her ability to bring her gas pipeline fantasies to fruition.

That was when Sarah Palin reared her head. (I love that mental image.)

She saw the launching of a natural-gas-pipeline project as a God-given opportunity to prove herself bigger than Big Oil. Thus was born, in the spring of 2007, the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, or AGIA, under the terms of which the state would pay up to $500 million in startup money to the company it selected to build the pipeline. The chosen company would have to comply with AGIA’s stringent, inflexible terms. Certain provisions, such as the state’s refusal to set tax rates in advance or even specify the formula by which they would be calculated, seemed designed specifically to discourage Exxon Mobil, BP, and Conoco Phillips from participating.

In fact, the terms discouraged almost everybody. In the end, the only bidder to meet AGIA’s requirements was the Calgary-based pipeline-construction company TransCanada. Nonetheless, Palin was thrilled. She felt that with AGIA, she’d stuck her thumb in the eye of Big Oil as no governor before her ever had. She was good, and they were bad, and she’d defeated them. She was Joan of Arc at Orleans.

There was only one problem: Trans Canada didn’t have any gas. Exxon Mobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips had the gas. In her populist fervor, what Palin had done—aided and abetted by the state legislature—was contrive to pay as much as $500 million to a foreign company to look into the possibility of someday building a line.

Here are a few delicious quotes just to wet your appetite:

As Mike Hawker, the Republican co-chairman of Alaska’s House Finance Committee, told me one night in Juneau not long ago, “The only thing standing in the way of an Alaska gas pipeline is the Sarah Palin administration.”

“Facts to her are like Silly Putty,” said Larry Persily, former deputy commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Revenue, who later worked for Palin in the state’s office in Washington. “She shapes them into whatever people want to hear.”

“She just doesn’t think it’s important to know things,” said Andrew Halcro, the conservative who ran against her for governor in 2006. “Issues register on her brain only in terms of populist appeal. She never thinks through the policy implications.”

From the other end of the political spectrum, state representative Les Gara of Anchorage, a liberal, said, “She doesn’t spend time studying problems. She’d much rather deliver a sound bite than do the hard work of governing.”

She may not be “a fucking psychopath,” as one very prominent Alaskan told me she was, but Palin does seem prone to what psychologists call magical thinking.

Please take some time to read the whole article as it is VERY well written and informative. (Besides it is not from ADN so we know they appreciate the traffic.)

And before I forget I must give a hat tip to my pal AKM over at Mudflats where I found this and who also did a great write up as well. Wow you have SO much reading to do today. LOL!

Sarah Palin attempts to ensnare Barack Obama in doomed gas pipeline deal.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday called Alaska's proposed natural gas pipeline "promising" as a national energy resource and pledged to discuss it with Canadian leaders during his Feb. 19 trip to Ottawa.

"It's a project of great potential and something I'm very interested in," Obama said Wednesday during an interview in the White House with the Anchorage Daily News and 15 other regional newspapers.

"As I mentioned during the campaign, I actually think that for us to move forward on the natural gas pipeline as part of a comprehensive energy strategy -- that includes both more production as well as greater efficiency -- makes a lot of sense," Obama said.

Well right here is the obstacle that Obama is going to face with the Palin proposed pipeline deal, he wants a deal that "makes a lot of sense"! Nothing, and I mean nothing, that Sarah Palin ever does "makes a lot of sense"! That is like expecting the Pope to stop wearing long dresses and that pointy hat. Ain't going to happen!

And pray tell how did Obama even get caught up in this debacle?

Gov. Sarah Palin wrote to Obama last week asking him to discuss the pipeline with Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he visits Canada next week during his first foreign trip as president.

Alaskans have "appreciated your strong support for the construction of such a pipeline," Palin wrote, adding that the pipeline should be "a significant component of North American energy policy in the years to come." Palin was unaware Wednesday that her letter had been read, saying she had sent it only "just the other day."

Now see what she is doing here? She knows she is rapidly losing support up here in Alaska so she is trying to get President Obama's name connected with her plan to give it more credibility.

Genius. Clearly somebody must have suggested it to her. (Her conjoined twin Meg Stapleton perhaps?)

President Obama I urge you to stay as far away from Sarah Palin, and her whack-a-doodle ideas as humanly possible. She is the political equivalent of Typhoid Mary. If you get close enough she will infect you as well and you may someday suffer the same fate as the once beloved John McCain.

And whatever you do DON'T LET YOURSELF BE PHOTOGRAPHED WITH HER! I am convinced that all her crazy African witch hunter Reverend Muthee needs is just one picture of the two of you together to do some freaky Voodoo body switching magic, and the next thing you know we will have "Freaky Friday 2: Now we acknowledge black people!".

If you see her coming toward you at any future political functions RUN! And don't stop until you hear the heel break off of her shoe and are convinced she cannot catch up with you!

Listen Mr. President you may think I am overreacting a little but you don't know this woman! And if you don't believe me just ask Walt Monegan, John McCain, or Talis Colberg.

Wait! What do I hear in the distance? Is that the sound of a bus revving its engines? Oh my God, bits and pieces of Talis Colberg's career are still hanging from its bumper!

The very controversial Pebble mine may prove to be yet another empty promise of vast riches for Alaskans.

The copper and gold prospect in salmon-rich Southwest Alaska holds about 72 billion pounds of copper and 94 million ounces of gold, according to the estimate published Thursday by one of the companies advancing Pebble.

What's the value of all that metal?

At today's swooning metal prices, Pebble's mineral resource is still worth about $236 billion. But six months ago, when metal prices were soaring, the same amount of copper, gold and molybdenum was worth $500 billion.

Those numbers don't include the cost of prying the metal from the rock or harnessing the electricity needed to power a massive, remote mine. The project -- deeply controversial for some Alaskans because of its location near the headwaters of two rivers that feed the world-class Bristol Bay salmon fisheries -- could turn out to be uneconomical to build despite the huge value of the minerals there. The mining companies with rights to Pebble are a couple of years away from deciding whether to build a mine.

Pebble critics include commercial and sport fishermen, villages located downstream of the mine, environmentalists and hunters. Many of them hope to prevent any future mining in the drainages where Pebble is located because they are worried about a mine polluting salmon streams.

Alaskans must seem like the biggest rubes on the planet.

It seems like every charlatan, Three Card Monte dealer, and get rich quick schemer eventually finds his way to our beautiful state with its abundant resources.

From the days of the Gold Rush, where thousands of hearty prospectors found crippling conditions and sometimes death, to the various big time operators promising Alaskans a life of eternal leisure if they will just sign away the mineral rights that seem to be in every body's backyard, the promise of fast money and streets paved with gold have been a part of life in the Last Frontier since well before the days of statehood.

For many who consider themselves Sourdoughs this is all taken with a grain of salt, but for the new comers who followed the smell of oil money up here, these are the opportunities of a lifetime. Sadly it seems that many of Alaska's voters and politicians fall into that second category. Fools who are waiting to be parted from their money.

Sure the oil pipeline was definitely a scheme which paid off huge dividends, but ever since then every other roll of the dice has come up snake eyes.

And yes I include the much touted, and very unlikely, gas pipeline as a roll of the dice which is going to crap out. And cost us enormously.

The idea has merit, but it was poorly constructed and, as it currently stands, doomed to failure. Here is but the latest obstacle standing in the way of progress on this shiniest of Alaska's "we are all going to get rich" schemes.

Frank Richards, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Transportation, told legislators in June that $2 billion would be required for infrastructure work to prepare for gas pipeline construction.

And that is on top of a 500 million dollar investment that Alaska has already promised to get the ball rolling for TransCanada to start construction on a gas pipeline.

So to sum up, before ANYTHING can even begin on this huge financial gamble, Alaskans have placed 2.5 billion dollars on the table. And with oil prices dropping like an anchor, exactly how much longer is our oil money cushion going to last? A loss like this wil lsurely be followed by even more money being funneld into the project before its final death rattle.

So do I have faith that the Pebble Mine is every going to make any real money for Alaskans? No.

Do I think it will even be built? Not anytime soon.

Do I think that there are better places for Alaskans to invest there rapidly dwindling resources? Yep!

What are they? Alternative energy resources. Alaska has the potential to lead the nation in developing alternative energy for this country. But to do it, Alaska needs to cut the oil umbilical cord and move in a fresh direction, with a reasonable, and well thought out plan.

No more half baked schemes conceived by tricksters who have one foot out of the door even as they shake your hand to seal the deal, no we need to come together and make this happen on our own. We have the resources, and the expertise (Alaskans are incredible inventive), we simply need the will.

The Ap investigates Sarah Palin's natural gas pipeline deal with Canada. Are there problems? It's Sarah Palin, of course there are problems!

Gov. Sarah Palin's signature accomplishment - a contract to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48 - emerged from a flawed bidding process that narrowed the field to a company with ties to her administration, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Beginning at the Republican National Convention in August, the McCain-Palin ticket has touted the pipeline as an example of how it would help America achieve energy independence.

"We're building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline, which is North America's largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever, to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets," Palin said during the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate.

Despite Palin's boast of a smart and fair bidding process, the AP found that her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited the winner, TransCanada Corp.

And contrary to the ballyhoo, there's no guarantee the pipeline will ever be built; at a minimum, any project is years away, as TransCanada must first overcome major financial and regulatory hurdles.

In interviews and a review of records, the AP found:

-Instead of creating a process that would attract many potential builders, Palin slanted the terms away from an important group - the global energy giants that own the rights to the gas.

-Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

-The leader of Palin's pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman's former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada's lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal, interacting with legislators in the weeks before the vote to grant TransCanada the contract. Plus, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Palin's pipeline team.

-Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Palin, the company could receive a maximum $500 million.

When you hear John Mccain and the other Republican talking heads waxing poetic about Sarah Palin's energy "expertise" this is the only thing they are referencing. Her ENTIRE energy experience is based on this one deal.

And it is terribly flawed. In fact it is NEVER going to come to fruition!

You see Sarah Palin is not an expert on energy. Nor, despite her recent "policy speech", is she an expert on special needs children. As far as I can tell, she is not an expert on ANYTHING. Except possibly passing her herself off as something she is not.

She is a faker. And she has managed to smile and wink her way into the hearts of millions of ignorant people and who want desperately to believe her.

The facts are that Sarah Palin seduced Alaskans into blowing 500 million dollars on a deal with a company that has no financial backing. And a deal that will soon fall apart taking her political career and her vaunted "expertise" with it.

In the end she is just a joke. But she is not a funny joke. Because she is a practical joke that was played on Alaskans, and we will be the ones with egg on our faces when this thing is finally over.

If Sarah Palin thought Alaska was a cold place to live when she left, just wait until she comes skulking back. Lady you have not seen cold yet!

(For more on this gas pipeline scandal you can visit the Huffington Post here.)