Getting to know you: the series

Sarah Palin on discussing Barack Obama's acquaintance with Ayers who was active in the Weather Underground when Obama was eight years old and who later turned himself in to the feds:

Mrs Palin has defended her comments, saying they were "about an association that has been known but hasn't been talked about".
--the BBC

There are other things that have been known but not talked about much.

Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert have a new article at Salon about extremists who supported and helped shape Governor Palin in her early political career.

Though [Mark] Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution’s language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as “Black Helicopter Steve,” to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. “Every time I showed up her door was open,” said Chryson. “And that policy continued when she became governor.”

Read it all here.

h/t to JaciCee who also discusses the AIP's links with the North American Secessionist Convention and the Constitution Party. Check her article out here.

Max Blumenthal's interview with Mark Chryson:


--the BB