Salon Blows the Lid Off Palin's Radical Alaska Connections!

Truth2Tell

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Fri Oct-10-08 12:40 AM
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Salon Blows the Lid Off Palin's Radical Alaska Connections!

Edited on Fri Oct-10-08 12:53 AM by Truth2Tell

Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert have just posted a new expose of Sara Palin's ties to the Kookjob Alaska Independence Party. This is not about Todd folks. This is about Sara. Salon has the goods - it's a long and juicy piece. Worth every minute. Read it and weep Freepers. Who's the terrorist now?

From: Salon

Meet Sara Palin's radical right-wing pals

Oct. 10, 2008 PALMER, Alaska — | On the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to sink behind the snowcapped mountains that flank the picturesque Mat-Su Valley, 51-year-old Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a park bench, reveling in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The stocky, gray-haired computer technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic battles to eliminate taxes, support the “traditional family” and secede from the United States.

So long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said Chryson, the AIP had to stand on guard to stymie a New World Order. He invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that were intended for his personal protection. “This here is my attack dog,” he said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from his passenger seat. “Her name is Suzy.” Then he pulled a 9-millimeter Makarov PM pistol — once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops — out of his glove compartment. “I’ve got enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement,” he said, clutching the gun in his palm. “Then again, so do most Alaskans.” But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of that faraway place some Alaskans call “the 48.” “We want to go our separate ways,” he said, “but we are not going to kill you.”

Though 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.”

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/10/palin_chryson/">Much much more, the whole dirty rotten pile of Palin wacko garbage, here.

Edit to add http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/politics/2008/10/10/blumenthal_chryson/index.html?source=video&aim=/ent/video_dog/politics">this direct link to Blumenthal's interview with Mark Chryson, the head of the AID. Watch all the way to the end for the fun kicker. :)