Like Cows As A Kid? Sarah Palin Has $95K (A Year) For You

But only if you're an unqualified childhood friend.

The NY Times will publish tomorrow some of the background of the rise of the biggest celebrity to come along in politics in a generation.

Of course since that celebrity is Sarah Palin, she's above criticism.

First, about the crony (one of at least five):

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

The Times article is a catalog of cronyism, brittleness and pique as practiced by both Sarah and the self-styled "First Dude".

This is very indicitive of how Palin operates:

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

What that NY Times fails to note is that this blogger isn't on Daily Kos ... she is a conservative blogger and can be found here.

And then there is this litle nugget:

Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.

So the "First Dude" gets involved with personnel decisions in another branch of government? Imagine if it came out that Jill Biden was doing something like that ... Rush Limbaugh would burst a blood vessel over it.

It seems that in 1996, Palin told her first campaign manager she wanted to be President. I'm sure that if Obama said that in 1996 he would be called uppity by more than just Congressman Westmoreland.

And it goes on and on.