Palin Rumors

Exporations ^ | Sept 6 2008 | Charlie

[bahblahbah]

Cripes, this has gotten ridiculous. Folks, look, let’s just run through a list here. (Updated.)

1. Yes, she is Governor of Alaska. No, she’s not the Lieutenant Governor. No, she’s not currently Mayor of Wasilla. Yes, she was Mayor of Wasilla, some years ago.
2. Yes, there are people in Alaska who think she’s too liberal.
3. Yes, she did push for and approve the Wasilla Sports Center. Yes, it did cost a lot of money. (People keep saying $20 million, that article says $14.5 million, but then they also added a $1.2 million dollar food service/kitchen piece. This year, since Palin was out of office as Mayor.) Yes, the city went into debt to do it (how did you buy your house, bunkie?) and raised the city sales tax from 2 percent to 2.5 percent to pay for it. Yes, the city is paying it off early.

4. Yes, she did want authority to have wolves culled from the air, because they were taking too many moose and caribou. Which people hunt for food in the back country in Alaska. No, she isn’t shooting them herself. I mean, not that she couldn’t, but I’m sure she doesn’t have time. (Thanks to bluemerlin in the comments.)
5. No, the Downs baby (Trig) isn’t Bristol’s kid, and no, the kid wasn’t born with Downs because (a) Palin flew on an airplane (b) went home to have the baby after an amniotic leak (c) because he was the result of incest between Todd Palin and Bristol.
6. No, Track (the kid who is leaving for Iraq) didn’t join the NG because he was a drug addict. He may have joined the NG because he was tired of people saying his Mom was getting him into the good hockey leagues. (Yes, that one was original reporting. I’ve got sources in Wasilla.)
7. No, she’s never been in any porn as far as anyone can find (and God knows I get enough google hits on those very topics.)
8. No, no one seems to be able to even find swimsuit pictures of her from her beauty queen days; God knows I looked. The bikini pictures that are around are photoshopped, just like the Vogue cover I have up.
9. No she wasn’t a member of the (wild-eyed libertarian) Alaska independence Party, although her husband once was

10. No, neither the (Canadian) National Post, nor Marc Armbinder at the Atlantic have troubled themselves to issue a correction. Yes, the New York Times did finally correct their story of September 1 — on September 5. This was after Elizabeth Bumiller was quoted by Howard Kurtz as saying she was “completely confident about the story.” Yes, that was after the New York Times’s source retracted the story. Yes, this should embarrass the Times, Bumiller, and Howard Kurtz. No, there have been no signs of embarrassment.

11. No, she was never a Pat Buchanan supporter; even when Buchanan claims she was, she was on the board of Steve Forbes’a campaign in Alaska.
12. No, she’s not anti-semitic. In fact, she has an Israeli flag in her office. (Contrary to popular belief, the usual Evangelical thinks Israel has a right to exist, granted by God.)
13. No, she’s doesn’t believe that the Iraq War was directed by God. Yes, she did pray that proceeding with the war was God’s will. (Ever hear the phrase “Not my will, but Thine, be done”?)
14. No, Buchanan doesn’t support her now; in fact he’s supporting Obama. (Buchanan did think her speech was amazing, but then so do 80 percent of the people who saw it.) Or maybe not. Buchanan sure doesn’t like McCAin though.
15. yes, she was pregnant when she got married
16. No, so far there’s no confirmation she had an affair while she was married, and they’ve denied it pretty strongly. No, she wouldn’t be the first Christian woman who got a little on the side, if it were true.
17. No, she wasn’t named as a co-respondent in a divorce; there’s no evidence she had an affair with her husbands’ business partner. The partner tried to have his divorce records sealed because he was being harrassed by journalists who used them to get his phone number.

18. Yes, barring immaculate conception virgin birth (whatever), Bristol appears to have had sex with her fiancee. No, Bristol didn’t receive only “abstinence-only” sex ed.
19. Yes, I have it on reliable report that Sarah Levi’s mom has been heard screaming “Way to go Levi!” at her future son-in-law son. No, it doesn’t appear to have been when Bristol broke the news to her family.
    Note: I originally understood this story to be about Sarah, not Levi’s mom, in the context of hockey games. As such, it’s shouldn’t be in a Sarah Palin Rumors story, but I like the story too much to delete it.

20. yes, her 17 year old daughter is pregnant; no, the baby’s father is not an eighth grader; no, having sex at 16 is not statutory rape in Alaska
21. yes, she did fire the public safety guy — but he said in the Anchorage paper that, for the record, she never, and no one else in her administration ever, tried to make him fire her ex-brother-in-law
22. and yes, the state trooper (her sister’s ex-husband) she was worried about did: tase her 10 year old nephew; drive his state patrol car while drinking or drunk; did threaten to “bring her down”; and did threaten to murder her father and sister if they dared to get an attorney to help with the divorce.
23. yes, the state trooper was suspended when he was put under a court protective order
24. no, the trooper wasn’t fired
25. yes, she did fire the Wasilla Chief of Police as Mayor; yes, it was because he was lying to the City Council.
26. Yes, she did try to cut her own salary as Mayor by $4000 a year; yes, she had voted against the $4000 a year raise while on the City Council.

27. No, she didn’t cut funding for unwed mothers; yes, she did increase it by “only” 354 percent instead of 454 percent, as part of a multi-year capital expenditures program. No, the Washington Post doesn’t appear to have corrected their story. Even after this was pointed out in the comments on the story.
28. No, she didn’t cut special needs student funding; yes, she did raise it by “only” 175 percent.
29. yes, she did try, clearly unsuccessfully, to get Bristol married off to her fiancee before the story came out
30. yes, she did ask the librarian if some books could be withdrawn because of being offensive; no, they couldn’t; yes she did threaten to fire the librarian a month later; no, that wasn’t over the books thing but instead over administrative issues; no, the librarian wasn’t fired either; yes, the librarian was a big supporter of one of her political opponents; yes, the librarian was also the girlfriend of the Chief of police mentioned above; no, this is not the first time in the history of civilization that someone has been threatened with being fired over a political dispute
31. No the list of books she wanted to ban that’s being passed around isn’t real; among other things, it includes a number of books published after her time in office there.

32. No, that hasn’t actually deterred people from claiming it really is true even if the list isn’t correct. For example:
    “This list might not in fact reflect the books Sarah Palin wanted banned. As more than one person in Comments has pointed out, some of them were not published when Palin was in office. It is my hope that the mainstream media will not let this story drop and that at some point an actual list will surface. The very thought of having someone who once advocated book-banning possibly occupying one of the highest offices of our land fills me with profound dread. It should fill you with dread too.”
33. No, I don’t understand why a fake list is supposed to fill me with dread, either.
34. no, it wasn’t a shotgun wedding; Bristol and Levi been engaged for a good while according to his mother. It was either an accident or just an unconventional order.
35. yes, she’s an was an Assembly of God Holy Roller. No, she doesn’t attend an AoG church now. Yes, she did leave the AoG because they were getting too weird for her.

36. No, she’s not anti-Mormon. No, not all AoG churches are anti-Mormon. (AoG is even more hard-core about allowing each pastor and congregation to make their own decisions than the Baptists are.) (Thanks to AnonAmom in the comments.)
37. No, she’s not from another planet. No, I haven’t actually heard that one yet, but you wait.
38. yes, she apparently believes in some variant of Intelligent Design
39. no, she didn’t try to force the schools to teach it; she said if someone brought it up, it was an appropriate subject for debate.
40. No, she doesn’t believe in “abstinence only” education. Yes, she thinks abstinence is an effective way of preventing pregnancy. Duh. Yes, she believes kids should learn about condom use in schools.
41. yes, she kills animals and eats them, and wears their skins
42. yes, she was a beauty contest contestant

43. yes, she was once a sportscaster
44. yes, she has a college degree in Journalism, but I won’t hold that against her, as she seems to have found honest work as well
45. yes, she sometimes wears her hair up; no that’s not a “beehive”
46. yes, her husband is Not A White Person (he’s a Yup’ik; an Eskimo but not an Inuit as my Inuit cousins have taken some pains to explain)
47. yes, she has on occasion tried to get money from the federal government.
48. yes, she did finally turn down the money for the bridge. Yes, that meant changing her mind about it.
49. yes, she was vetted extensively, not just in three days — I’ve got links to press reports about people coming to Wassila on 29 May, and we had her on our Veepstakes at PJM from the first day we ran it.
50. yes, she want to a bunch of colleges before getting a degree. No, that’s not illegal. Yes, she seems to have made something of herself anyway.

51. no, they didn’t talk to a lot of the R’s power structure during the vetting; that probably has to do with the fact that she beat them in elections and sent a bunch of them to jail.
52. Yes, Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech was written by a speechwriter. Duh. No, none of Obama’s, McCain’s, nor Biden’s speeches were impromptu off the cuff things either.
53. Yes, she did put the Governors plane on eBay. No, that’s not how it was finally sold. Yes, McCain did say it wrong. Bad McCain.
54. No, Sarah Palin doesn’t have such control of Alaskans that people are afraid to say bad things about her. (What, are you nuts? Look at this list.) No, I don’t think it’s likely that she called Obama “Sambo”. (Good God, man, I’m ten years older than her and I barely remember “Little Black Sambo.”) Yes, I’m sure there are people who don’t like her — I’ve talked with some myself.
55. No, she’s not a “global warming denier”, and when the crush dies down remind me to explain why the very phrasing “global warming denier” is anti-scientific, anti-intellectual, and a clear sign of a desire to impose your beliefs by coercion. But in the mean time, while I do believe that she has expressed some skepticism that warming is wholly human-caused, the existence of the Alaska Climate Change Sub-Cabinet and the Alaska Climate Change Strategy work demonstrate that she’s considering the problem and has brought together people more expert than she to advise her.

[FredZarguna]

No one has yet refuted my claims about Sarah Palin. I have photographic evidence of all of these things:

• That she is a Pirate.
• That she is a Viking Raider.
• That she was in Dealy Plaza on the Grassy Knoll with a high powered rifle on November 22, 1963, 3 months before she was born.
• That she has been responsible for causing serious harm to one of the pillars of the Fourth Estate: US Weekly.
• That she has caused great distress to The Oprah.
• That she has refused her Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• That she has forbidden her Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till her Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, she has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• That she has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• That she has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with her measures.

I'm waiting for these to be answered.

[freespirited]

yes, she was pregnant when she got married

If this has not been confirmed by Sarah herself, it is not appropriate to include.

Track was born 33 /12 weeks after the wedding. No one can say conclusively based on this that he was conceived before the marriage.

[cowtowney]

thanks

[Portrait of a Lady]

You might be interested in this site:

http://www.fightthepalinsmears.com/

[CaliGirl-R]

keeper. Thanks.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

The punditocracy and lefty blogs are abuzz with accusations that Sarah Palin, who once briefly touched on the topic of book removal from the local library in a city council meeting, is some sort of book-burning extremist (even though precisely zero books were actually removed, banned or blacklisted during her tenure as mayor or Governor).

Seems to me that the Democrats might want to re-think this topic.

See, Banning stuff is a big part of the Party's agenda. Moreover, it's a big part of its record, and its legacy.

Cases in point:

o The ban on "assault weapons", meaning scary-looking guns. A prime mover: Joe Biden.

o The ban on "drug paraphernalia", which criminalized things like bongs, even if no actual drugs were present. This is what sent comic actor Tommy Chong to prison. "Earlier this week, in an interview with the Washington Post, Tommy Chong was asked what the average citizen can do to further the cause of decriminalization. 'Check out the people you’re voting for,' Chong replied. 'For instance, Joseph Biden comes off as a liberal Democrat, but he’s the one who authored the bill that put me in jail. He wrote the law against shipping drug paraphernalia through the mail - which could be anything from a pipe to a clip or cigarette papers.'” http://www.kxmb.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=267949

o How about the Democrat politicians banning incandescent light bulbs? Now there's a winner: the alternative, compact fluorescent bulbs, are a source of deadly mercury pollution. Break one, and you have a hazmat situation that will cost you thousands of dollars for an official clean up.

o Enjoy your low-flow toilet that clogs and backs up all the time? Thank the Democrat ban on full-flow toilets.

...And so on. There's even a ban against carrying more than $5,000 in cash. "A person carrying $6,000 in cash to a vehicle auction where the auctioneer will only take cash may be stopped and his cash seized because it is presumed only a drug dealer would have or carry that much cash." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture

So Sarah Palin once glanced against the topic of book removal in the local public library by daring to ask a question? The Democrats, including their VP nominee, are way ahead of her.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"“Lucille” claims that Sambo is a common word for African Americans in Alaska."

All I know about "Sambo" was what I read on the menus of Sambo's restaurants when I was a kid.

(Really good pancakes, by the way.)

The story, at least as I recall it through the mists of time, involved a little dark-skinned Indian boy who ran a tiger around a tree until the tiger turned to butter or something.

There was nothing derogatory about it--the little Indian kid emerged a hero, after all--and it wasn't about Africa or Africans or people of African descent. The cartoon that accompanied the little story showed a little kid in a turban and Indian-style loose cotton pants. Besides, there are no tigers in Africa, AFAIK. They're an Indian-subcontinent sort of cat, right?

How'd this morph into a perceived slur against African-Americans, anyway? Is there another Sambo story out there that I'm unaware of? If so, how come Sarah Palin heard about that and I never did? ...The politics of race has become quite impenetrable, IMHO. Probably because true racism has been pretty effectively stamped out... except among the likes of Jeremiah Wright and Michelle Obama, apparently.

[Burkean]

The story was indeed written about an Indian boy—written by a British woman who lived for some time in British colonial India. But some years after the story was originally published it was republished with artwork depicting Sambo (and his parents Mumbo and Jumbo) as African Americans in what would today be considered a fairly derogatory depiction. Thus the term became somewhat equivalent to Uncle Tom.

I don’t believe for a moment that Sarah Palin used the term. I continue to be astouded at the depths of inanity that the Democrats are sinking to in an attempt to slur this woman.

[Figment]

Let’s not forget the one about her being Rosie O’donnell in costume. Have you ever seen them together in a picture?

[FredZarguna]

Let’s not forget the one about her being Rosie O’donnell in costume. Have you ever seen them together in a picture?

You can trash her daughters, say her son should've been aborted, call her a racist and a bigot, and her husband a drunk. But that one is WAY over the top.

[SweetWilliamsMom]

My recollection is that the sales tax was increased by 1/2 of a percent for the sports arena at Wasilla BUT only after a vote by the folks in Wasilla and that it passed overwhelmingly. Incidentally, at one time there were 5 Olympic sized ice sheets in America, and 3 of them were in Alaska — Anchorage, Eagle River (betwen Anchorage and Wasilla), and Soldotna (probably smaller than Wasilla). There are several now. FYI, all the elementary schools in Anchorage (and I’d guess the Valley, also) have a maintained outdoor skating rink.

And yes, to someone else, there’s lots of use for swimsuits in Alaska. Go through Wasilla on the Parks Highway in the summer whenever it’s above 65 degrees in the summer and there will be folks right at Wasilla Lake enjoying the sun & the summer & the water. The first time my mom came up to visit in the summer and we were driving through Wasilla and she saw all those kids out in the water, an involuntary explanation came out of her mouth: “Those people are crazy!”