I'm really proud of my home town. When I say, "I'm just a girl from Homer" on my blog, radio or television show, I like to think it's not so much self-deprecation as it is a friendly warning. When Palin signed off on her Facebook blog bashing Obama on Friday with "Sarah Palin in Homer, Alaska", I laughed. Lady, if you think I give you a hard time, hang on.
Palin posted:
And here I am, thousands of miles away from DC out on a commercial fishing boat, working my butt off for my own business, merely asking the Democrat politicos and their liberal friends in the media: "What's the plan, man?", and they seem to feel threatened by my question. So, I'll go back to setting my hooks and watching the halibut take the bait, and when I come back into the boat's cabin in a few hours...
Strange. The Palin's fishing business doesn't include IFQ's (Individual Fishing Quotas) necessary for commercially harvesting halibut. Her baiting hooks and keeping a manicure is laughable. Halibut are on the bottom of the ocean, hard to watch them "take the bait". I hope she's got a crew license. (Shrug).
Sarah Palin & company spent several days in Homer filming her "Sarah Palin's Uh-laska" show. (Eyes rolled).
On the public dock, private security patted down private citizens. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure from their government. Private security searching private citizens in a public place, doesn't fall under that category. It's a bit more hinky.
Whether it was TLC or the Palins who contracted security, under what authority did they operate in a public location? Were they looking for weapons? Well, now there's a Second Amendment issue.
This is Alaska, we carry guns. You can open-carry or acquire a concealed weapons permit from the state. If you are a law abiding citizen, you don't even need a permit. Sarah Palin recently endorsed Alaska Tea Party Candidate Joe Miller for US Senate. His supporters carried assault rifles in last month's Golden Days Parade in Fairbanks. If weapons are good enough for a public parade, weapons should be fine at a public dock.
Maybe it wasn't about guns. Maybe it was about cameras. In that case, it's a First Amendment issue. Whether Palin had a problem with the First Amendment, the Second Amendment or the Fourth Amendment, she contradicted her entourage's actions at the Homer dock.
Risking accusations of being all "Wee-Wee'd Up", one Homer woman made a sign in her shed. She then took the 30-foot-by-3-foot banner out to the boat harbor. It said "WORST GOVERNOR EVER". Kathleen Gustafson is a teacher married to a local commercial fisherman. She felt like Sarah Palin had let the state down by becoming a dollar-chasing celebrity and ignoring the oath of office she'd sworn on a Bible.
Kathleen was motivated by the fact Palin was using the very place where her family makes a living to fortify the Palin personality cult -- pretending to do the very thing they worked so hard to sustain. Initially, Kathleen just wanted to waste a little of the camera crew's time, since Palin wasted so much of her time purporting to represent Alaska's interests.
She didn't imagine Palin would be so easy to draw out.
Saturday morning, Billy Sullivan helped Kathleen tape the banner up on his place of business at the top of the boat ramp. Then here she came. Sarah.
She couldn't just walk by. Only a few fishermen and tourists would have seen the banner, but Sarah had to stop and protest. I spoke with Kathleen. She said she wanted Palin to know how she felt, but never dreamed she'd get the chance to say to her face, "You're not a leader, you're a climber!" Early in the conversation, Sarah actually winked at Kathleen in what seemed to be a case of eyelid Tourette's Syndrome.
At one point, a Palin daughter chanted, "You're just jealous". Kathleen told Sarah she was disappointed that she dropped her responsibility to the state to became a celebrity. Palin said incredulously, "I'm honored. No, she thinks I'm a celebrity!" Really? So the camera crew wasn't an indicator? How many times do you have to be on magazine covers to gain celebrity status? Something about camping with Kate Plus Eight in rain slickers seems, well, a little celebrity.
Billy Sullivan caught much of the interchange on his cell phone camera. The back of her security guard's head and Todd Palin attempted to block Billy's view, continually rotating like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. What were they afraid of? I guess that's what happens when you're filming a "celebrity". He was even told by one of the Palin daughters, "You're an A-hole". Charming family values.
I asked both Billy and Kathleen which Palin daughter said what. Neither knew. They don't have televisions and aren't interested in Palin's personal life and dramas.
In what has become typical tragic irony, Sarah initially claimed to support Kathleen's First Amendment Rights. But as soon as Billy Sullivan walked toward the dock, one of Palin's entourage tore down the sign to great applause from her group.
Todd Palin approached Billy (who owns a business called Dockside Fish and buys halibut on that dock) and asked him to get out of the Discovery crew's shot. "You just can't get enough of her, can you?" he asked. An Alaska State Trooper told Billy he should call the Homer Police Department and report the trespassing and destruction of property.
What the Palin folks don't seem to understand is simple; if Fred Phelps gets to hold his hateful signs up at military funerals, Billy should be able to put Kathleen's "WORST GOVERNOR EVER" banner on his building and not have a Palin goon tear it down.
The First Amendment only matters when you say or write something someone else doesn't like.
For someone who doesn't hold elected office and denies being a celebrity, Sarah Palin may want to get a "Constitutional Handler".
Transcript of the video can be found here.
Kathleen's banner torn down, but Palin is still the "WORST GOVERNOR EVER".
