Freedom Convoy Foolishness Arrives in Anchorage

The usual gang of fools decided to hold a freedom convoy here in Anchorage. They went to the Cabela's parking lot where the city council member from Eagle River, Jamie Allard, welcomed them. She posted a video of herself saying there were hundreds and hundreds of them (it looked more like tens and tens to me) and added, "I don’t know how traffic is going to do with all of these guys, but we don’t really care." A couple of points.

Last year and the year before, conservatives were saying that blocking traffic was the worst crime ever and that protesters should be run over and killed. Around the country, Republicans proposed laws making vehicular assault legal under "stand your ground laws" as long as you remember to say the magic get-out-of-jail words "I was scared." Now, they are saying blocking traffic and shutting down cities is "legitimate political discourse" or something similar. To be fair, it's not entirely a flip-flop; they were all in favor of blocking traffic with various hysterically unsuccessful "million truck marches" against Obama and with their Trump Trains. I think the difference to them  is that drivers are patriots and pedestrians need to be summarily executed.

Intentionally blocking traffic is already illegal, regardless of your politics. Allard seems to be endorsing law breaking. How do her constituents in Eagle River feel about this? I'm being rhetorical. We all know how they feel. As long as it's inconveniencing the liberals downtown and not happening in their backyard, they approve of the lawbreaking and they approve of their lawmaker approving of the lawbreaking.

Cabela's is private property. Are they allowing the convoy to use their parking lot because they support them or is the convoy trespassing? If you're not familiar with Cabela's, they sell outdoor gear, including hunting and fishing gear. Guns and ammo make up almost a third of their business. A large part of their natural clientele is going to lean hard right, but it will also include outdoorsy tree-huggers as well. Someone in the press needs to get a statement from them. 

Why did Russia abandoned Alaska?

For reasons I no longer remember, I signed up for Quora some time back. If you've never been there, Quora is a social media site where people ask questions and the site tries to match them up with who can answer the questions. As a break from working on the book, this spring, I started looking at the questions they sent to me. I do not understand their sorting algorithm. Okay, I went to UofWA, I understand why I get questions on that. I live in Anchorage, Alaska, so I understand getting question on both parts of that. I volunteered mammoths so I expect questions on that and understand why I get occasional questions on paleontology.

Then there are the silly questions. Some silly questions have nothing to do with anything have claimed any knowledge of. Typical among these would be something like: "If Godzilla and Optimus Prime was to fight, who would win? Posted, December 2014. 47 answers. 98k views." Even if I had a strong opinion, why would I pur myself at the bottom of that queue? (By the way, the answer is King Kong, who would let them beat themselves into rubble, then squash their remains.) The most "relevant" question I get is endless variations of "What would happen if Russia invaded Alaska? (Answer: It would be one of the stupidest military moves in the history of stupid military moves.) Another too frequent question is some variation of "Why is Alaska part of the US instead of still Russia/Canada/Japan/Ecuador/Senegal?" Today, I had one of the latter. It was just posted and the only answer was very brief, so, on a whim, I decided to give the questioner a serious answer. Mind you, I did this mostly from memory (based on reading Hector Chevigny's Russian America back in the 80s). I expect my Alaskan friends to correct numerous details.

Why did Russia abandoned (sic) Alaska?

Russian America was an expensive liability. It had never particularly been profitable. Since Eastern Siberia had no roads to speak of, it was far too difficult to settle. The Russian America Company had exhausted the sources of the most profitable fur animals. The few Russians there bought most of their food and supplies from California, meaning much of the small amount of wealth the colony produced was not going to Russia. The incompetent rule by the Russian America Company was becoming an embarrassment to the imperial government, as difficult as that was to accomplish. And it was impossible to defend. Russia had no navy to speak of in the Pacific and the transport situation in Siberia meant it would have taken months, even a full year, to move troops there.

That last point was the final straw. In 1854, during the Crimean War, french and British forces laid siege to Petropavlovsk, the main town on the Kamchatka Peninsula and the main port serving Russian America. Although the siege was unsuccessful, it greatly alarmed the imperial government. If the western allies had attacked the capital of the colony, Novo Arkhangelsk (Sitka), there would nave been nothing to stop them. Britain would almost certainly have annexed it to Canada (which didn’t yet exist, but you get the idea) which would have been a huge humiliation to the imperial government, especially considering how big it looks on the map.

After the California Gold Rush, some of the newly rich entrepreneurs in San Francisco had expressed interest in buying the colony to monopolize it’s fishing potential. Their offer was not without precedent. The area around Ft. Ross, California was controlled by the Russian America Company for about thirty years although the imperial government had never made a formal claim to it. When that area was trapped out and efforts to produce food for Russian America turned out to be less productive than they hoped, the company sold its claims to John Sutter, who promptly discovered gold there. The imperial government had no interest in letting the company sell the colony, but once the idea was implanted in their minds, it looked like a possible way to unload the colony with the minimum amount of embarrassment.

The younger brother of tsar Alexander II was a major proponent of the sale, and negotiations were well along when Lincoln was elected the Civil War broke out. In the US, one of the major proponents of the purchase was California senator William Gwin, who briefly advocated for California secession before being arrested. Back in the colony, a new governor had started making the long needed reforms. However, when gossip reached them about the eagerness of the government to dump the colony, all his efforts were put on hold. One by one, families began to pack up and return to Russia. After the war, The American Secretary of State, William Seward, one of the founders of the Republican Party and a proponent of the purchase since day one, negotiated the final sale and convinced the Republican Senate to rarity the treaty.

There is an interesting side note to the story. Russia and the US had always had a good relationship. Catherine the Great was one of the first foreign heads of state to recognize American independence. These good feelings continued for the next century, aided by the fact that we had almost nothing to with each other and knew almost nothing about each other, except that our relations with the British were often tense. In 1863, a bloody rebellion broke out in Russian Poland. As France had always been a supporter of the Poles, the imperial government feared a reopening of the Crimean War hostilities. This time their great fear was that Britain and France would move against their fleet which was bottled up in the Baltic Sea at St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, the French and British had been helping Confederate blockade runners and even threatened to recognize the Southern government. A deal was struck, whereby the Russian left the Baltic while these still could and sailed to New York. This saved the Russian fleet and was seen as a major show of support for the Union by a major European power. Mixed in with the purchase price for the Alaska was a Union payment for the the Russian fleet’s expenses. Hiding this payment was one more reason for Russia to go ahead with the sale.

And they all lived happily ever after except for the Russians in Alaska who were fairly quickly driven out by the military governor sent to administer the new acquisition, a very bitter man named Jefferson Davis who—probably correctly—believed that his name had frozen his military career and deprived him of the opportunity to find glory and promotions during the war.

I've already had on upvote.

Adventures in pointless paperwork

When the oil money started to pour in from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline at the end of the seventies, there was a spirited public debate over the best way to spend it. There were some good decisions and some bad decisions. One of the best was to create a rainy day account which we named the Permanent Fund. Under the law, 25% of the state's oil revenue goes into the account. According to a complex formula, a certain amount is paid out in dividends to all the permanent residents of the state.

Since I've been back for almost two years, I'm entitled to a dividend this year. The deadline for filing the paperwork was back in February. The checks start going out in three weeks. Naturally, the Permanent Fund has waited till now to let me know they want more documentation. They have records of me from when I lived here in the seventies and eighties. They want me to prove that I'm that guy. I've already given them my birth date, Social Security number, and Alaska driver's license number. Now they want a birth certificate.

I go to the California Department of Vital Statistics where I find out it will take me over six months to get one. A helpful note tells me that it might be faster for me to go to the county registrar's office. I go to the County of Los Angeles' registrar's office where I find out it costs $28, it could take up to three weeks, and they don't take payments over the internet. They do, however, work with a third party vendor who will take my payment and make my request for me. I go to VitalCheck where I fill out the forms and find out it will cost me $6 more. Oh, and I need to prove who I am first.

Monday was a bank holiday. This morning I trotted down to my bank, found the clerk with the notary stamp, and had him attest that I am who I say I am. Of course, I had to prove that to him first. How did I do that? I showed him the driver's license issued to me by the state of Alaska. Back home, I scanned the signed and stamped form and sent it to VitalCheck. They'll look it over and send it to the County of Los Angeles. They'll look it over and send me my birth certificate. Since the clock is running out, I asked for the overnight mail which will cost me $26.50 more.

To sum up: The State of Alaska wants me to prove I am who I say I am. To do that, I'm spending $60.50 to have a piece of ID, issued to me by the State of Alaska, shipped down and up the West Coast. There is a fair chance that I'll miss the deadline. And it's completely pointless. Not only am I wasting time and money to tell one part of the state about a piece of ID issued by another part of the state that I already told them about, none of this proves that I'm that baby that was born in California. And, whether I am or am not that baby is irrelevant to the requirements of the Permanent Fund law. They need to know whether I met Alaska residency requirements for all of 2014. They're still just taking my word for that.

Now, I'm going to have a salami sandwich. It's the only way I could think of to end this on an up note.

Heading home

You may remember that I was planning to move to Alaska on Monday. This has been a tremendously anxiety generating process. Tuesday before, I had to admit that I can't afford to move. I don't have enough money to pay for the move. This meant, I had to put everything back into storage and head to AK with nothing more than a suitcase and a carry-on. After factoring in a few more panic attacks, unexpected delays, and other crises, I reached Friday night a full day behind schedule. Still, I got a lot done on Saturday. I had a tight, but feasible, schedule for Sunday. Everything was packed and in the staging position to move. The rental truck was backed up at the bottom of the stairs.

I got up according to schedule. There was some sort of hullabaloo going on out on the driveway between Joe and Suzi, the landlord and landlady. It seemed to involve her running back and forth between her car and the house while clutching a pillow. After she was gone, I got to work. One box, four boxes, six boxes, a small piece of furniture into the truck. Stop to stretch and have a drink of water after every four loads. Everything was on schedule at 10:15, though I would rather have been a bit ahead of schedule. Then I tried to take the big rocking chair down the stairs. Halfway down, I lost control and it flipped me head first into the door at the bottom of the stairs.

I woke up about fifteen minutes later in a puddle of blood. I stuck both hands into it before I was able to get up. Then, I staggered over to the landlord's house with blood covered hands and face. He reacted appropriately and rushed me into his bathroom to wash up. Almost all of the blood was coming from a big gash over my left ear. The rest was from minor scrapes on my arms. I called Tessa to cry about not being able to finish the move on time. I told her I was thinking of laying down for a minute before going back to work. She told me that, No, I was not going to do that; I was going to get myself to a hospital. Joe had come to the same conclusion and was getting changed.

An actual puddle of blood. I need to drop everything and parlay this empirical knowledge into writing hard-boiled detective stories.

Joe dropped me off at the emergency entrance to the Skagit Valley Hospital in Mount Vernon, almost forty miles from the apartment. He left me at the desk and ran off to work. It turns out that the hullabaloo in the morning was one of their girls going into labor and Suzi rushing to her side. This meant no one would available to take me home. That was not my top worry at the moment. I was checked in right away and sent to a nurse who took my vitals. She took me to an examination room to wait for the doctor.

A clerk came in to get my information. "Insurance?" "None." "Job?" "No, and I'm leaving the state tomorrow."

A friendly woman came in to ask some more specifically medical questions. She told me I'd need a tetanus booster. I asked if it would make me autistic. She paused. I said that Jenny McCarthy, a great medical expert, said it would. She realized I was joking and we had a great time filling out the rest of the form.

Next, came the doctor, very busy, but friendly and listening. He had me retell the story of my crash. By now, it was forming its standard narrative. When I said I thought I was thrown head-first into the door, he lost all interest in my scalp and began examining my neck to make sure it wasn't broken. It wasn't. His next concern was to make sure my skull wasn't broken. For that, he sent me for a cat scan. That was kind of cool. The machine wasn't nearly as noisy as the ones on teevee and in movies where it symbolizes the sterile and impersonal nature of modern medicine. After another wait in the examination room, the doctor returned to tell me the cat scan looked fine.

After one final wait, he came in to sew me up. By then, I was starting to feel the many other bangs and scrapes on my body. He asked if I had anything else that needed attention. I held up my arm and showed him a bloody scrape, "I have an owie on my elbow." He looked at it, "we call that a boo-boo." "Sweet," I thought, "I can't wait to impress my medical blogger friends with my new knowledge of technical jargon." The actual sewing up was anticlimactic. He washed around the wound, clipped a little hair, and stapled me shut. He finished with a quick review of the care and feeding of a head wound and concussion and the warning signs that I should rush back to the ER. A few minutes later, the friendly woman came in with my discharge papers.

And I was done. It was around five. I hadn't eaten or had caffeine all day. I wasn't sure how to get back to the apartment. I decided to start with food. Some wandering led me to the cafeteria but the cook was on break. I bought a large coffee and a bag of chips and began calling people. At some earlier point I had called Number One Sister. It's a sign of my confusion that I was more concerned about telling her I wasn't going to make my flight the next day than I was about telling her that I was in the ER, covered in blood, with several possible bad prognoses in the outing. In my mind, the headline was "Fuck-up Little Brother Fucks up Again." The flight was not her top priority. Her headline was more along the lines of "OMG Is This the One That Finally Does Him In?" She questioned me about what the doctor said, gave me my new flight information, and let me know the lady at Alaska Airlines had told me to stop bashing my head in. The correct headline was "This aging hippie tried to move his furniture without help. What happened next will have you facepalming till your nose bleeds." I called Tessa and gave her another update.

Now, I needed to get to the apartment and find something to eat. I tried calling my nephew who is a brewer near Mount Baker, but he wasn't home (probably ski boarding on the mountain). I sat around for a while pondering my situation. I wondered if the city busses from Mt. Vernon connected with the Island bus service and if they ran on Sunday evening. Number One called again to see how I was managing the last hurdles. I told her about needing a ride. She was typically practical and blunt, "take a cab." The woman at information recommended a local cab that she thought would take me that far out of town. The cab was there in a few minutes and we were on our way. That left food. Because I expected to be gone that day, I had already disposed of all the food in the apartment. While I was wondering if I could afford to have the cab wait while I ran (shuffled?) into a store, the driver came to my rescue by asking if I minded stopping at a store so he could get some water. I bought him a bottle of blue vitamin water and myself a frozen pizza.

Back in the almost empty apartment, I made a few weak comments on Facebook about my situation while waiting for the pizza to cook. I made a nest on the floor out of the blankets and pillows I had kept out to use as padding around the furniture. After eating most of the pizza, I took a handful of ibuprofen and crawled into the nest hoping this really was the bottom.

LATER: The next morning, Tessa came over to help me with the last pieces of furniture. She looked them over and told me to hire someone younger and stronger. A local labor exchange sent over two guys who finished loading the truck and followed us to the storage place to do all the unloading. I spent the night at Tessa's and, in the morning, she made sure I made it to the airport on time. I lost my debit card at the airport and my luggage didn't make it to Alaska with me. I went to bed on Christmas Eve hoping this really was the bottom.

Alaska still AAA. Who knew?

CNN Money was kind enough to post a little map of the world showing the economic club that the US has just been booted out of.

A closer look at the map reveals something that hasn't appeared in any other news coverage. Apparently, the downgrade only applied to the Lower Forty-eight.

Despite appearences, Alaska must be doing something right. That's the only thing the map could mean, right?

Ted Stevens

The news is reporting that former Senator Ted Stevens was killed in plane crash near Dillingham in Southwestern Alaska last night. As a former Alaskan I had no love for Ted Stevens, but I feel for his older kids. Their mother, Ann was killed in a plane crash in 1978. I remember hearing the explosion from my house, looking at the glow on the horizon, and wondering, "what was that?" I can't even imagine the kind of pain they must be feeling now.

Since so much travel is done by small plane in Alaska, there are several fatal crashes each year. Alaska's laughable excuse for a Representative, Don Young was elected in a special election after being beaten by a dead man, Nick Beigich Sr., whose plane disappeared in Southeastern Alaska days before the election. It was Beigich's son Mark Beigich who defeated Ted Stevens two years ago. Also on the plane with Nick was Speaker of the House Hale Boggs, the father of news personality Cokie Roberts. Their plane has never been found. Will Rogers and Wiley Post were also killed in a plane crash in Alaska. It's just that kind of place.

Layers of idiocy

The big bloggers have all picked up on this bit from a Palin piece running on ABC News' site this morning.

As to whether another pursuit for national office, as when she joined Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the race for the White House less than a year ago, would result in the same political blood sport [opposition research and accusations of ethics violations], Palin said there was a difference between the White House and what she had experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the "department of law" would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

"I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out," she said.

There is no "Department of Law" at the White House.

There is more wrong with this that that there is no Department of Law in the federal government. There is in the Alaskan government, so it could be an honest slip on her part. As Steve Benen points out, the real problem with that statement is in what she thinks a federal "Department of Law" can do.

It's tempting to think Palin may have been referring to the Justice Department, but it's not "in the White House," and it doesn't have the authority to "throw out" charges against the president. Maybe she's thinking of the White House Counsel's Office, but again, it has the ability to defend against allegations, not "look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out."

She clearly shares the Bush/Cheney idea of a royal president who can do whatever he/she wants and who is above the law and constitution.

I see one more thing wrong with her statement. Unless the author of the piece (Kate Snow) is misreporting it, the discussion was about running for office, not holding office. Palin doesn't appear to understand the distinction. Even if there was an all powerful Department of Law in the White House that could stop investigations and prosecutions, it would not be at the beck and call of everyone running for office, it would not have the power to stop political campaigns from conducting opposition research, and it would not have the power to stop people from making accusations. On that last point, her recent ham-handed effort to silence Shannyn Moore is clear evidence that she does believe executives have the power to stop people from making accusations or even from reporting that someone made accusations.

Palin's ego, idiocy, and sense of martyrdom are like an onion; every time you peel away one layer, you find another layer of ego, idiocy, and sense of martyrdom underneath.

She hides it so well

Alaska attorney Thomas Van Flein on his client Sarah Palin:

She's actually very articulate.

Does anyone remember the old Saturday Night Live skit where Phil Hartman played Ronald Reagan switching between his senile grandfather public persona and his evil mastermind private persona. I'm not sure why I thought of that.

Sarah gets bored

Sarah Palin had a press conference earlier today to announce that she is retiring as governor of Alaska in three weeks. Like her fellow Republican governor, Mark Sanford, she managed to babble her way through more than half of her time before finally getting to the point. It was vintage Palin, a mixture of faux folksiness, self-congratulation (look at all the stuff I did and how I stood up to all those people who were mean to me) and whining (you won't hear any of that in yer mainstream media, also). She managed to wrap herself in her children and whine once more about the people who picked on them. She said the best way she can end the same old politics and help hardworking, average Joe Sixpacks, sittin' around their kitchen tables, in this great land of ours, supportin' the troops and worryin' about the liberal media and activist judges and special interests who think they know better that real Americans how to protect our amazing freedoms, is by bein' a maverick and rejectin' politics as usual by workin' outside big government, by golly, 'cause she's not a quitter and that's why she's quittin' the same old politics as usual, also. She didn't say what she's going to do outside the government and how that's going to support freedom.

This fits in perfectly with her high-school princess personality. She got the title and the attention she wanted, but now it's hard work and not as fun as she thought it would be, so she's going to leave and chase after the next shiny thing. No doubt, she'll show us what a good mother she is and how much she supports family values by pulling the kids out of school and having Willow look after Trig while she races around the country performing her populist act before rabid crowds of teabaggers. Winking at resentful, but adoring libertarians gets her much more of the kind of attention she so pathetically craves. Maybe she can have feud with Paris Hilton. If we're lucky, maybe this flakiness will come back to haunt her in the 2012 primaries.

I have have to agree with her on one thing, though: this is what's best for Alaska. I wish I could be sure that having her down here was good for America.

Also.

Beck fails history

Glenn Beck, 30 June 2009.

How can the world not be laughing at us? We have all these resources. Why did we buy Alaska in the 1950s? We bought Alaska for the resources. And now we say no!

I don't even know where to start. He makes Sarah Palin look like a mental giant.

Against it before she was for it

Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski took to the floor of the Senate yesterday to defend the value of volcano monitoring and request regular funding for the USGS early warning system in Alaska.

I think we’re all aware that there have been some recent comments made about federal spending for volcano monitoring and the suggestion perhaps that this might be wasteful money — that we don’t have any need to be monitoring volcanoes. And I can assure you, Mr. President, that monitoring volcanoes is critically important to the nation, to the world, and particularly to Alaska right now where, as I say, we are being held hostage by a volcano.

Volcano monitoring is a good cause. Early warning can prevent millions of dollars of damage to aircraft and other machinery and even save lives. It's good that Murkowski is making the case for it. However, Murkowski would have a lot more credibility if she wasn't such a partisan hack on the issue. Notice how she avoids criticizing a fellow Republican by resorting to the uber passive "there have been some recent comments made." We all know who made the comments. It wasn't some amorphous "they." It was Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, one of the up and coming stars of her party and a possible candidate for her party's presidential nomination in 2012. More importantly, Murkowski voted against the stimulus bill that included $140 million to upgrade USGS facilities including the Alaska Volcano Observatory, the office that performs the volcano monitoring in her state.

BOOM!

Meanwhile, back in the old country, Mt. Redoubt is erupting again. Redoubt is one of four volcanoes on the west side of Cook Inlet opposite of the area where most of the population of Alaska lives. The four are Mounts Spurr, Redoubt, Iliamna, and St. Augustine. Most of time, these volcanoes are happy to rumble and let off little plumes of highly scenic steam. But once a decade or so, one of them has a serious eruption.


The four volcanoes are part of the Alaska range that continues southwest and west to become the Aleutian Islands. The whole arc is a subduction zone where the North American Plate rides over the Pacific Plate. As the oceanic crust sinks into the mantle and melts, blobs of it rise up under the continental plate and cause volcanoes. The water that seeped into the oceanic cruse over the millions of years that it spent being the floor of the Pacific Ocean stays with the magma and gives it its explosive power when it gets close enough to the surface. This is the same process that created the Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon and powers its ten or so active or potentially active volcanoes. In Alaska there are about fifty volcanoes that have erupted in historical times (about two hundred fifty years). That's more than twice as many volcanoes as are in the other forty nine states combined. Volcanic eruptions are a fact of life in southern Alaska.


Source: Alaska Volcano Observatory

Right now, the ash plume is blowing up the west side of Cook Inlet. Most of the population lives on the east side, though our family cabin is already in the ash fall. The biggest hazards from eruptions of the four Cook Inlet volcanoes comes not from the explosions or associated lahars (mud flows cause by the sudden melting of the glaciers on the mountain), but from the ash plume. Volcanic ash is made up of fine particles of highly abrasive rock and glass. It's dangerous for people with respiratory conditions, bad for most machinery, and disastrous for turbines, such as jet engines. Unfortunately, Alaska's road network covers less than a third of the mainland. Everything else depends on aircraft and, during an eruption, the airports in the path of the plume ground most flights.

Number Three Sister is involved in the aircraft business in Anchorage and I need to call my sisters tonight (Mom's estate business). I'll pass on any news, gossip, or insights that she has that hasn't been in the regular news media.

Speakin' of Ann and Sarah, also

While Ann Coulter is out telling anyone who will listen that those bad liberals are always playing the victim card and whining about how the liberal media is victimizing her by not giving her as much exposure as she wants, Sarah Palin has her own whines about how she was victimized by that "upper echelon of power brokerin' in the media and with spokespersons" and their their filters, you know, and also yer Joe Sixpacks sittin' around their kitchen tables in real America tryin' to make ends meet and Putin with his head readin' all her magazines and all the newspapers, so she told Charlie thanks, but no thanks. Also.

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) believes Caroline Kennedy is getting softer press treatment in her pursuit of the New York Senate seat than Palin did as the GOP vice presidential nominee because of Kennedy’s social class.

“I’ve been interested to see how Caroline Kennedy will be handled and if she will be handled with kid gloves or if she will be under such a microscope,” Palin told conservative filmmaker John Ziegler....

“It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out and I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also that was such a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy versus, say, the scrutiny of what her candidacy may be.”

Palin said she remains subject to unfair press coverage of her and her family.

[...]

She observed that Katie Couric and Tina Fey have been “capitalizing on” and “exploiting” her.

Why would the the liberal media elite give Palin more scrutiny than Caroline Kennedy? It might be because Kennedy has lived in the public eye since before Palin was born. We know who Kennedy is, but 99% of Americans had never heard of Palin until McCain announced her as his running mate. It might be because Kennedy is one possible candidate for one Senate seat from one state, while Palin was a major party nominee for Vice President of the United States. And if there is a class issue, it's that Kennedy has some and Palin does not.

What's wrong with Palin?

Sarah Palin is the only one of the four people at the top of the ballot who has not released any part of her medical records. The subject has come up a few times during the campaign. Because of McCain's age and obvious declining health, there is a very good chance that she might have to take over during his first term if they are elected. This makes her records more relevant than most vice presidential candidates'. At first she flatly refused to release the records or to talk about her health. However, last week, in her interview with Brian Williams, she appeared to reverse herself and offer to fill that gap:

If that will allow some curiosity seekers perhaps to have one more thing that they either check the box off that they can find something to criticize or to rest them assured over. I'm healthy, happy, I've had five kids, that's going to be in the medical records, never seriously ill or hurt, you'll see that in the medical records if they're released.

Notice the "if" at the end of her run-on sentence. It wasn't exactly a promise, but her staff behaved as if she did mean it as one. Last Sunday, a Palin spokeswoman told ABC News that they planned to release her medical history early this week. Everyday, ABC called the campaign and was ignored. Off the record, some aides said it was just taking some time to round up the records. That sounds to me like they are the frontier card and taking cover behind peoples' misconceptions of Alaska as a primitive and distant place. As someone who lived there for twenty years, I can assure you that the healthcare facilities and communication in southcentral Alaska are as modern as anywhere in the Lower 48, and better than many. This is not a case of needing to send dogsleds out to find rustic country doctors. If she told her doctors to release the records, there is no reason them not to have been available in two or three days. But, since today is the Friday before the election, it looks like she has managed to run out the clock. She bluffed and won.

If she's so goll-darned healthy, why has she been acting like she has something to hide? Steve Benen suspects she's just being secretive for its own sake; she's really just another Cheney at heart and refuses to give out information as a matter of kneejerk orneryness. I wonder if maybe she does have something to hide. To quote a punditing giant: "Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to." I think it's unlikely that she has a life-threatening illness like McCains's cancer or Biden's brain aneurysm. She has lived a very active and vigorous life and hasn't slowed down over the years. Two possibilities leap to my mind (admittedly a dark and cluttered place, unfit for visiting by women, children, and those of weak stomach. But, today is Halloween, so what the heck).

On possibility is something related to her fertility and the birth of her children. Many have suggested that she took some unnecessary risks when she was pregnant with her youngest child, Trig. Proof of that would certainly be embarrassing. So too would be a confirmation that she was already pregnant with Track when she got married to Todd. Both of these have already been widely discussed, so confirmation would be a rather minor embarrassment. More damning with her constituency would be a record of something like an abortion, though I've never heard even rumors of such a thing.

The more likely possibility, in my view, is mental health, specifically depression. The only evidence that this might be the case, is the tanning bed Palin bought soon after moving into the governor's mansion. A tanning bed can be nothing more than a vanity tool, but in Alaska many people use them to treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a form of depression brought on by the long dark winter nights in northern latitudes. SAD is epidemic in Alaska. A long time has passed since Thomas Eagleton had to drop out of the vice presidential race because it was revealed he had sought treatment for depression and public attitudes about mental health have since changed for the better, but there is still enough stigma attached to mental health that it's a career killer in politics. A 2002 poll showed about half of voters would be less likely to vote for a candidate who admitted to experiencing mood disorders. The percentage is probably higher among Palin's constituency, religious conservatives who are more likely to judge mood disorders as signs of weak character rather as legitimate illnesses. If true, most of her constituency would probably rally around her and make her an exception to their usual harsh judgment, just as they did with Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction. But, a revelation of mental health problems would also provide those who are less enthusiastic about her with a good excuse to reject her.

Lastly, she might be hiding something trivial, but embarrassing, like cosmetic surgery. The best hope for the McCain/Palin ticket is a narrow win and they can't afford even a small erosion of support. This gives them plenty of reasons to hide her medical history if it is anything but perfect.

In the unlikely event that they win, this issue should stay on the table. But even if they lose, Palin has said she plans to remain a figure in national politics, so we shouldn't let her off the hook. Most liberals and Democrats can be forgiven if they forget about Palin over the next few months, but, in this environment, it's never too soon to prepare for the next cycle. I hope the Alaskan bloggers stay on this, along with all her other scandals and legal problems, and make sure we won't have Sarah to kick around any more after this election.

My old home

Last night Keith Olbermann had Wayne Barrett, the senior editor for The Village Voice, on to discuss the latest Sarah Palin scandal. Barrett has been looking into the big new home that Palin's husband Todd says he and a few "buddies" built on Lake Lucille near Wasilla. Barrett has uncovered evidence that the "buddies" who helped Todd may have included the same contractors who got the contract for the expensive sports arena she committed the town to building and which left Wasilla $25 million in debt when she moved on to greener pastures.

This is the kind of mutual back-scratching corruption that destroys political careers everywhere and, in this case, includes many names familiar to those following the Ted Stevens corruption trial. But one name made me sit up and shout at the teevee.

And it turns out that, at least I was able to clearly establish one contractor, the big, building supply contractor who supplied the building materials for the complex is the same guy-Spenard is the name.

"Arrrgh! Not 'some guy' Spenard." I shouted.

Clever Wife and the little cat, Marlowe, stared at me and scooted away on the couch.

The "guy" Spenard died in 1934 and had nothing to do with new homes for Stevens and the Palins. The Spenard involved in the Palin story is not a guy, it's a company, Spenard Builders Supply. But it was not the mere incorrect historical identification that bothered me, Spenard strikes at the core of my Alaskan identity.

First some history. Joe Spenard arrived in Alaska in 1916, a year after the Alaska Railroad created a supply depot called Anchorage on the Cook Inlet. Spenard was that type of combination frontier entrepreneur and civic booster that is an important and familiar character in the founding stories of most western towns. He had one of the first trucks and first cars in the town. He put the latter to work as the first taxi in Anchorage. In order to have some place to drive people, he built a road to a small lake five miles south of town and built a dance hall and bathing beach there. The lake, which till then had been called Jeter Lake after a homesteader with a farm on one side of the lake was forever after known as Spenard's Lake, or Lake Spenard. It is currently part of the busiest float plane airport in the world. His road became Spenard Road. Despite attempts by generations of city planers to level and straighten it out, it stands out as the most crooked road in the town, sprawling diagonally across the otherwise neat rectilinear grid of Anchorage. The neighborhood around his road naturally became known simply as Spenard. Joe's lodge thrived for a few years, then burned down. He hung on in Anchorage taking care of his other businesses, but left at the beginning of the Depression and died at the home of one of his kids in Sacramento in 1934.

Spenard the community lived on. When Anchorage incorporated in 1920, Spenard was far outside its limits, separated by the small, muddy canyon of Chester Creek and a couple miles of scraggly forest. Spenard developed a separate identity which was recognized by the federal government in 1937 when they assigned the community its own postmaster and post office. Like many across-the-line communities, Spenard developed a thriving trade in whatever pleasures the authorities in the city were trying to suppress. At any given time, Spenard might not have had more bars and strip joints that its main competitor, Fourth Avenue, or more massage parlors than Mountain View, but its unique combination of treats gave it a reputation as a one stop shopping place for fun. The fun wasn't limited to conventional vices. Spenard had bookstores, its own shopping district, Cap Lathrop built a movie theater there, and it was home to one of the all-time, great hobby shops--Spenard Hobby, among whose cluttered shelves any kid could find the ingredients for the school project of his dreams.

My family moved to Spenard in 1969, a time that I refer to, in the age-old tradition of bookending local history epochs by disasters, as after the earthquake and before the pipeline. Local politics at the time perennially revolved around the question of annexation. The Anchorage urban area, by then, had spread across Chester Creek and beyond Spenard, but the city limits only extended to the edge of Spenard. Most Spenardians wanted no part of the Anchorage government, preferring to either remain under the borough (as counties are called in Alaska) or to incorporate as a real city. Each election produced a three-way tie stalemate. The issue came to a head after a fatal hotel fire on the city limits that might have been controlled except for the turf fighting between the city and borough fire departments. The solution was essentially to abolish the city in 1975 and reincorporate the entire borough as a single municipality. Sadly, they chose to call it Anchorage instead of Greater Spenard. For most of the twenty years I lived in Alaska, I lived in or around Spenard. I was a died-in-the-wool Spenard patriot. I insisted in using Spenard in my mailing address instead of Anchorage.*

During my last five years there, I lived a block away from Spenard Builders Supply. SBS has nothing to do with Joe Spenard except for the fact that it's located in his town. It was established seventeen years after he died on a convenient railroad siding a few blocks off Spenard Road. When I was a kid, it had just the one location and supported my high school drama club with gifts of lumber and paint for our sets. Since then, it's become a construction giant. They have thirty-some locations around Alaska, a truss factory, and supply most of the home building industry in the state. It's sad that they got caught up in politics, but not surprising. Since the economy of Alaska is a boom and bust economy based on resource extraction and construction, their business is implicitly political and every development decision in the state potentially affects them.

So now Palin has not only made he state of Alaska a national laughing stock, she's brought shame on the good name of Spenard, my sleazy, old neighborhood. That's it; the woman has to go. Fortunately, there are intrepid Alaskans working on that. A group called Alaskans for Truth is looking into the technical requirements to start a recall (that is, if the legislature doesn't impeach her first). I hate to get my hopes up, but it's beginning to look like there is just enough justice in the universe to make sure Palin's career is toast.

* It's a little known secret that it doesn't matter what you write as your town and state on a letter; as long as the zip code and street address are correct, the mail will find its destination. When I was living in Spokane, WA, I received a package addressed to me in Tacoma, Oregon. But it had the right zip code and street address.

Palin's excellent dinosaur adventure

Uh oh. Those relentless investigative reporters of the right think they have caught lefty celebrities and mainstream media stars getting hoaxed by a humor site and spreading lies about Sarah Palin. Warner Todd Huston has a column up on a dozen or so right-wing sites with the poop on our latest perfidy.

As if we needed another reason to think that the excitable Maureen Dowd and the empty headed Matt Damon are... well, excitable and empty headed… we get the newest raindrop in their river of blather as proof that their "research" into a subject seems to consist of hearing an unsupported claim and deciding it represent gospel truth. Our latest proof is that they both seem to have been taken in by a nutrooter lie, a fake quote that claims Sarah Palin said, "dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago."

Both seem to have fallen for a parody of Governor Palin invented by a blogger whose post seems to have been taken literally. The following self-identified "fake Governor Sarah Palin Quote" was posted on August 30: "God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago as ultimately flawed creatures, lizards of Satan really, so when they died and became petroleum products we, made in his perfect image, could use them in our pickup trucks, snow machines and fishing boats."

[...]

[H]ow do these two darlings of the far left explain away their use against Palin of a known nutrooter lie? I suppose, like most leftists, truth doesn’t matter to them if the end result is a win for their side. After all, for the left, the ends truly do justify the means.

Huston shouldn't be so quick to declare victory on that one. Many creationists do believe that the men of Genesis and dinosaurs lived together, that Noah carried dinosaurs on his ark, that dinosaurs are the dragons and monsters of ancient and medieval lore, and that they have only gone extinct in historical times. Google the word dinosaur along with Behemoth and Leviathan. Take Ken Ham (please! Ba-dump), the owner of the fancy new creation science museum in Kentucky.

In the Bible, in Job 40:15-24, God describes to Job (who lived after the Flood) a great beast with which Job was familiar. This great animal, called 'behemoth,' is described as 'the chief of the ways of God,' perhaps the biggest land animal God had created. Impressively, he moved his tail like a cedar tree! Although some Bible commentaries say this may have been an elephant or hippopotamus, the description actually fits that of a dinosaur like Brachiosaurus. Elephants and hippos certainly do not have tails like cedar trees!

[...]

Interestingly, the word 'dragon' is used a number of times in the Old Testament. In most instances, the word dinosaur could substitute for dragon and it would fit very nicely. Creation scientists believe that dinosaurs were called dragons before the word dinosaur was invented in the 1800s. We would not expect to find the word dinosaur in Bibles like the Authorized Version (1611), as it was translated well before the word dinosaur was ever used.

Also, there are many very old history books in various libraries around the world that have detailed records of dragons and their encounters with people. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly for creationists), many of these descriptions of dragons fit with how modern scientists would describe dinosaurs, even Tyrannosaurus. Unfortunately, this evidence is not considered valid by evolutionists. Why? Only because their belief is that man and dinosaurs did not live at the same time!

At least one Alaskan claims Palin went along with this theory up until a few years ago. From Philip Munger's Progressive Alaska. "[In June 1997] I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time." In another version of the story, Munger told an interviewer "I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them." About eight years later he ran into her again. "At this time, people were beginning to encourage her to run for Governor. Once again, we found ourselves being able to talk privately. I reminded her of the earlier conversation, asking her if her views had changed. She was no longer 'necessarily' a young earth creationist, she told me. But she strongly reiterated her belief that 'The Lord is coming soon.' I was trying to get her to tell me what she felt the signs were, when she had to move on." Unless Huston can discredit Munger as a witness, the truth on this one is, at best, that she used to believe that people and dinosaurs once lived together, but now she isn't sure.

By the way, the Matt Damon clip that is circulating does not "propagate [that] as fact." He question it. He says it is important to find out if that is something she believes. But lets not let facts get in the way. If there is one thing the right loves as much as a good press bashing, it's a good Hollywood bashing. By linking Dowd and Damon on this one it's a twofer Huston and his readers. Huston can be as snide and sarcastic as he wants, but he's wrong on this one. So, how will they explain away the use against Dowd and Damon of known wingnut misinformation when this gets out? Will they just ignore it? "I suppose, like most leftists rightists, truth doesn’t matter to them if the end result is a win for their side. After all, for the left right, the ends truly do justify the means." Yeah, my enemy is just plain evil, that must be the explanation.

Palin Rumors: Part 2

Charlie Martin has moved his Palin Rumors debunking to a new home and begun updating and adding to the list. I'll continue my practice of fisking his debunking as long as he keeps adding to the collection. Here are the next few on the list:

72. No, she didn’t try to charge rape victimsd personally for rape kits. This is one of those complicated ones with a tiny hint of truth behind it. First, the Cheif of Police in Wasilla did apparently have a policy of asking a victim’s health insurnace to pay for the rape kit as part of the ER visit. This, it turns out, is policy in a number of states, including Missouri and North Carolina. Second, the way this became an issue was after the then-governor of Alaska signed a bill forbidding it; this law was signed before Palin was Governor and no one tried to reverse it while she was Governor. Third, what the CoP in Wasilla wanted to do was charge the perpetrator as part of restitution.

I wrote extensively on this one already, here. Again Charlie hamstrings my attempt to do a thorough follow up by not citing his sources. Did someone really say she tried to reverse the Croft bill outlawing the practice or is he just being sarcastic? I'll probably never know. In any case, his attempt to justify her practice is bogus. First, who care if other states bill the victims? If they jumped off a cliff.... It's still wrong. Second, Chief Fannon's claim about wanting to bill the criminals is a weak effort at damage control at best. The rape kit is an investigative tool. Does Fannon bill the victims of shootings for ballistic work? Does he bill the victims of burglary for fingerprint work (if any is done)? In no other crime is the victim charged for the investigation. If the courts want to charge the criminal restitution for the costs to the police, nothing is stopping them. Fallon's action singles out the victims of this one crime for special--and cruel--treatment.

Two things about the crime of rape make the victims stand apart from the victims of other crimes. They are almost entirely women and they can become pregnant as a result of the crime. The rape examination can, but doesn't necessarily, include a morning after pill to stop a potential pregnancy. And, like any medical procedure during pregnancy, the exam has a slight risk of causing a miscarriage. Palin is an anti-abortion extremist; she opposes abortion even for rape and/or incest. Early in her political career she was active in picketing and driving away the only abortion provider in the Susitna valley. Many anti-abortion zealots oppose morning after contraception and encourage pharmacists not to carry it. Finally, the practice of billing the victims was introduced into Wasilla by Palin's hand chosen police chief and was not practiced by the chief she fired.

73. Yes, she did say that she figured if "under God" was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it was good enough for her. No, in context I don’t think that means she thinks the Founding Fathers wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.

In context, I don't see how it can mean anything else. Since Charlie doesn't actually link to the context, I will. You can make up your own mind whether Charlie or I are correct. Note: Eagle Forum, the Phylis Schafly group that originally polled her on this has taken the poll results offline. This copy is from the Anchorage Daily News. There are dozens of other copies of the poll out there. Eagle Forum isn't very internet savvy.

Part 1 of my fisking is here.

Alaska is right next to Russia

When others have mentioned this fact as something that qualifies Sarah Palin for vice president, most people have laughed. Therefore, I was surprised to hear her bring it up herself.

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

In her defense, maybe she thought Gibson said "What sight do you have..." in which case her geography factoid might have been a correct answer. She was referring to the Diomede Islands which straddle the International Date Line in the Bering Straits. Big Diomede is on the Russian side of the line and Little Domede is on the Alaskan side. There is a village of about 150 Eskimos on Little Domede who live mostly by fishing and walrus hunting. The islands are only two and a half miles apart, so it's easy to see one from the other on a clear day. In the winter when the ice is frozen you can walk across in about an hour.

This point was a laugh line a week ago but, since they don't have anything better to offer with Palin, the McCain campaign is trying to repackage it as a serious argument. If they repeat it enough, reporters might start to take it seriously (or, at least, report it seriously in their he-said-she-said narrative). Supporters, who will repeat anything their side says, will have no problem swallowing the koolaid that this is a serious argument. By the old propaganda principle called the "big lie," if you repeat something enough times it becomes conventional wisdom, regardless of how silly, false, or unbelievable it may have been at the beginning.

I see a big flaw in this big lie. Even if it is true that a person can become a foreign policy expert just by seeing the shoreline of Russia, I can find no evidence that Sarah Palin has done so. I can locate no news articles or any other evidence that she has ever been to Little Diomede or that she has seen Russia. Even she said, you can see Russia from Alaska, not that she has seen Russia from Alaska.

I lived in Alaska for nineteen years and I've been to Russia. I guess that makes me a thousand times the foreign policy expert she is. Former Python Michael Palin has been to Little Diomede, so I guess he's qualified to Prime Minister.

Fisking a debunking

Update: 09-09-08 I have made additions or corrections to items 2, 37, 38, 58, & 59. Just for the record, my previous comments are still there, but crossed out. I'll continue in this style unless it becomes incoherent.

Clever Wife regularly participates in a forum for craftspeople who make soap. Lately the forum has included some long digressions into politics. She is usually capable of responding to the misinformation she sees, but occasionally she asks for my help. The other day someone posted a list of "rumors" about Sarah Palin debunked by someone named Charlie Martin, a computer programmer in Colorado. Charlie's list on his blog Explorations is now up to 71 points and has earned him a spot on Fox News along with tens of thousands of blog hits.

Clever Wife thought that Charlie's debunking shows a solid pro-Palin slant. It looks that way to me, too. It's not so much about setting the record straight as it is about presenting a partisan defense of Palin against any criticism. CW asked if I could help her debunk some of Charlie's debunking. Some of his debunking is just fine, but many of the answers leave important information out, simply accept the McCain/Palin version of events, blame the victim, or take cheap shots at the mainstream media. After trying to hit just a few of the more difficult points on his list things rapidly got out of hand. I decided to take on the whole list fisk-style. I wish he included the source for some of the rumors because they really are quite stupid and Charlie is right to dismiss them.

I have tried to include all of his links, but forgive me if I miss or mess up a few. This is much more complicated than it looks.

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.

Palin is currently the Governor of Alaska. Previously she was governor of the town of Wasilla. While mayor of Wasilla, she needed a city administrator to help her oversee 53 employees (her count in 1996). That's fewer employees than the average WalMart has.

2. Yes, as Governor of Alaska, she’s the Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard. And yes, her professional military subordinate is quite impressed with her in that role.

As governor, she commands the Alaska National Guard when it is not in federal service. While that is command in some sense it is not the same as being "Commander in Chief." The only Commander in Chief is the president of the United States. She has no control over the equipping, mission, or deployment of the AKNG in Iraq; that is done by the Pentagon. Day to day management of the AKNG is done by Maj. Gen. Craig E. Campbell of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. His title is Commander. The only times she has ordered the AKNG into action has been to supplement fire fighting units and to sandbag coastal communities whose shorelines are facing rapid erosion. While these are management, neither of those constitute "command" experience in the sense of running a war.
As governor, she commands the Alaska National Guard when it is not in federal service. While that is command in some sense it is not the same as being "Commander in Chief." The only Commander in Chief is the president of the United States. She has no control over the equipping, mission, or deployment of the AKNG in Iraq; that is done by the Pentagon. Day to day management of the AKNG is done by General Craig E. Campbell of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. His title is Commander. The only times she has ordered the AKNG into action has been to supplement fire fighting units and to sandbag coastal communities whose shorelines are facing rapid erosion. While these are management, neither of those constitute "command" experience in the sense of running a war. General Campbell made the favorable comments that Charlie links to on Sept. 5; he was promoted a full rank, from Major General to Lieutenant General, on Sept. 8. You can decide for yourself whether or not there was a quid pro quo involved.

3. And yes, the New York Times says the job of Governor of Alaska is one of the harder, and more powerful, jobs in state government.

Alaska governors have significant power, so it is a real job. And yes, sneering at the New York Times always sells tickets on the right.

4. Yes, there are people in Alaska who think she’s too liberal.

There are people who think Bush is a liberal. What does that prove and why does a simple statement of fact like that constitute a rumor?

5. Yes, she did giggle when someone called Lyda Green a "bitch." Yes, Lyda Green is a cancer survivor. Yes, it was the same Lyda Green who tried to force a scheduling conflict that would make Palin miss her son’s high school graduation. Yes, this would also be the Lyda Green who complained no one had asked her about Palin during the vetting process.

Palin and Preen have an on-going feud and Green has done and said some nasty things. So has Palin. The real question is whether or not Palin's action was professional. This will not be the last time Charlie will dismiss an accusation of wrongdoing of Palin's by saying the bitch had it coming (blaming the victim).

6. 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, after 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. Yes, there is an ongoing dispute about title (following a struggle with the Nature Conservancy and another buyer. And yes, at the time it was built, Wasilla had a Federal judge’s decision that they had title to the land.

Wasilla had no debt when she became mayor and was twenty million in debt when she left office. She raised the sales tax rate while mayor. The Sports Center contributed a lot to that debt. Palin has a pattern of spending today without worrying about the long term consequenses. None of these fit with the Republican ideal of fiscal conservatism, though they do match Bush's behavior as President. The sports complex issue also highlights her impulsiveness. because she ordered construction to begin befor title was secured on the property, the town of Wasilla ended up paying $1.3 million to settle the land issue.

7. 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.)

She is in favor of the aerial wolf cull. This is a very controversial and a perennial issue in Alaska. Even many hunters and those in favor of culling the wolf population, so that they don't compete with human hunters, find shooting wolves from the air to be unsportsmanlike. I haven't seen the claim that she was going to conduct the entire cull by herself. This is number two of "the bitch[es] had it coming."

8. 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.

Down's Syndrome is a genetic disorder and not caused by anything the mother does while pregnant. As far as anyone knows, the father is her husband, Todd. No one except Todd has the right to challenge that; it's none of our business. However, her continued traveling after she went into labor with Trig does strike many as irresponsible.

9. 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.)

No one knows what goes on in another person's mind. I have no reason to believe Track had any other reason to join the Guard other than his stated ones. The only way this would be any of our business would be if Palin somehow forced him into the Guard or used her position to influence the course of his career there. I have heard no claims that anything like that is the case.

10. No, Willow and Piper aren’t named for witches on TV. Among other things, Willow was born before Buffy came on TV, and Piper was born before Charmed.

Daughters Willow and Bristol are named for places in Alaska. Willow is a spot on the map near Wasilla where the state was planning to build a new capital in the eighties. The project has since been indefinitely postponed. Bristol Bay is the Eastern-most part of the Bering Sea and a major salmon fishery. Piper is a type of plane common in Alaska. I don't know what Track and Trig are named for (Track might be a snowmobile brand). The equivalent would be someone in Washington state naming their kids Puget, Walla, Boeing, and Skidoo. It's eccentric, but is not otherwise significant.

11. Yes, Trig’s name may be misspelled. Isn’t it usually "Tryg" as in "Trygve"? In any case, I doubt he’s named for the Secretary General of the UN (1948-1952), either. But at least that was before he was born, unlike the others.(Thanks to Chris, via his blog

See # 10.

12. Yes, it appears that she has a Big Dipper tattooed on her ankle. She lost a bet.

I hadn't heard of the tattoo. It sounds cool to me, but has no political significance.

13. 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.) I would think the Big Dipper tattoo would be a giveaway.

The porn rumor apparently comes from her appearance. Many jokers say the glasses and hair make her look like the hot librarian/secretary/nurse character common in seventies porn. That joke pre-dates her selection by McCain.

14. 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.

What's the rumor here? Aside from curiosity, why does anyone care about swimsuit pictures from her beauty queen days?

15. No she wasn't a member of the (wild-eyed libertarian) Alaska independence Party, although her husband once was

She did address their convention in Wasilla when she was mayor there. She said, "Your party plays an important role in our state's politics ... keep up the good work, and God bless you." She claims that it was part of her duty to make visitors feel welcome in her town. And she did. The confusion about her membership comes from the fact that they felt so welcome that the leadership of the AIP believed she was one of them.

16. 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.

Again, what's the rumor here? Or is the point simply to take another shot at the New York Times and the mainstream media? It's not enough for the Times to correct the story, they must publicly express embarrassment.

17. No, she was never a Pat Buchanan supporter; even when Buchanan claims she was, she was on the board of Steve Forbes's campaign in Alaska.

As Mayor of Wasilla, she appeared at a Buchanan event wearing a Buchanan button. Buchanan got the impression that she and her husband supported him. She now denies that she did. As with the Alaska Independence Party convention, she says she was just trying to make Buchanan feel welcome in Wasilla. Notice how she only has a record of extending this courtesy to the farthest right fringe visitors? Did she find it necessary to welcome visiting environmentalist big shots and make them feel that she was on their side.

18. 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.)

An Israeli flag and membership in a church that supports Christian Zionism does not prove that she is or is not anti-Semitic. She did sit in her church on August 17 and listen to David Brickner, a speaker from Jews for Jesus, say that terrorist attacks were God's judgment on Israel because the Jews haven't accepted Christianity. If it had been Rev. Wright, Obama would be required to distance, denounce, disown Wright's comments, and then he would be accused of being insincere. Christian Zionism, the support that many end-time believers have for the state of Israel, is considered suspect by many Jews. The usual end-time scenario requires most of the Jews to gather in Israel and then be killed there during the final battles between the Antichrist and the returned Jesus. In most versions, the only survivors are 144,000 Jews who convert to the right kind of Christianity before the final battles begin.

19. No, I don’t think she's being "indoctrinated by Lieberman and AIPAC as we speak"; I don't get the feeling that being indoctrinated is something that Palin does well.

Joe Lieberman is helping brief Palin on McCain's positions this week. During that time she will be making few public appearances and will not be talking to reporters. Whether that constitutes indoctrination is a judgment call. In the sense that she's receiving some kind of Zionist brainwashing--which is what I read Charlie's response to imply the rumors he's heard mean--I'd say there is no indoctrination. In the sense that she's learning the right talking points to give to support McCain's campaign message, it could be called indoctrination.

20. Yes, it seems unlikely that she's going to be in hiding for the next two weeks seeing as she’s been in rallies twice in the last two days. Or at least it’s going to be real rough, given that she has three media interviews scheduled today (6 September) alone.

The current McCain strategy is to not let her give very many press conferences at all. She is only to appear at carefully controlled events. Of course, that could change.

21. Yes, it does appear that Palin’s local pastor preached about an end time when God will judge everyone, even Wasilla, Alaska, and the United States. Duh. This is called the Book of Revelations, and while I don’t believe it personally, I don’t see it as a disqualifier for the hundred million or so Baptists, Methodists, Evangelicals, Episcopalians, Catholics, Assembly of God, Presbyterian, Lutherans (traditional and Missouri Synod), African Methodist, and so on Christians in the US.

See # 18.

22. Yes, I do sometimes wonder about the state of Andrew’s health.

Who the hell is Andrew?

23. 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: "they should pray 'that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.'" (Ever hear the phrase "Not my will, but Thine, be done"?) Yes, this apparently freaks some people right out.

The quote about the war and God's will is unclear (different printed versions give it different punctuation adding to the confusion), but I agree with Charlie. It makes most sense if you read it to mean she hopes the war advances God's will, not hat she thinks the war already is God's will. Some people are indeed freaked out by any kind of God talk. My interpretation of Charlie bringing this up is that he meant it as a swipe at the mythical anti-Christian tendencies of the left in general and the Democratic Party in particular.

24. 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.

On September 2 Buchanan said his position on Israel and Iran is "a lot closer to Barack Obama's than it is John McCain." That's not an endorsement of Obama for president; that's a comparison of their positions on one issue. As far as I know, Buchanan hasn't endorsed anybody. I would be pretty surprised to find out that he's supporting Obama or any Democrat.

25. Yes, she was apparently pregnant when she got married

Track, her oldest son, was born seven months after she was married. It makes talk of abstinence till marriage a bit hypocritical, but it is a very trivial issue for most people. Most folks of her generation did not go to their marriage beds as virgins. This fact still upsets many on the religious right, the group she is supposed to help McCain with. Some pro-Democratic bloggers might think bringing up this fact from her past could be effective in driving some religious right voters away from McCain (so far it has not). I think it's lower politics than Democrats should engage in.

26. 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.

Some people in Wasilla think she had an affair with her husband's business partner. None of the people involved claim that happened. So, this is just local gossip.

27. 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.

See # 26.

28. 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.

Does anyone still care about Bristol's pregnancy? Sometime around April, Bristol got pregnant by her boyfriend Levi. Levi's year-old MySpace page (since removed) said he didn't want children. He has since become her fiance and everyone says they are thrilled about the little miracle. Palin tried to arrange a quick wedding right after McCain called her, hoping to have them married before anyone found out. The cover-up failed because someone in Wasilla gossiped (it was no secret among their high school friends). The only political issues involved in this are: A) the massive hypocrisy of people like Bill O'Reilly who went ballistic over Jamie Lynn Spear's pregnancy last year (calling her parents unfit and pinheads) but who now plead for Bristol's privacy, B) the support of the Republican Party for abstinence only education (they would have kept Bristol and Levi from getting any kind of birth control information or counseling), and C) the the religious right praising Bristol and the Palin's for their choice of keeping the baby when they don't want anyone to actually have a choice there. Also, does anyone actually think Palin gave her daughter a "choice"?

29. 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.

See # 28.

30. 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. And no, there’s no way that a 17 year old can be 5 months pregnant as a result of having sex before she was 16. Learn to count for God's sakes.

See # 28.

31. 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

That is simply not correct. In the Anchorage Daily News, Palin admitted that some on her staff had placed improper pressure on the commissioner for public safety to fire her ex-brother-in-law. Tapes exist of the conversations and Palin has suspended one member of her staff. Is this scapegoating or is it really a case of an overzealous employee? A through investigation might reveal the truth, but the McCain camp is trying to prevent one from happening.

I don't pretend to know what the whole truth is on this issue. The accusations are as follows: Sarah Palin's sister was divorced from State Trooper Mike Wooten the year before Palin ran for governor. It was an extremely nasty divorce that eventually drew Palin's entire family. The day her sister filed for divorce, their father called the troopers and reported every bad thing he had ever seen Wooten do. Wooten was disciplined by the Troopers for his bad behavior, but the Heath/Palin family did not think the discipline was severe enough. They thought Wooten should have been fired. The commissioner for public safety, Walter Monegan, says that, soon after taking office, Palin, her husband, and three of her staffers began pressuring him to reopen Wooten's case. Todd Palin hired a detective to gather evidence against Wooten and lobbied people further down the hierarchy between Monegan and Wooten. In July this year, Monegan was fired. He says it is because of the Wooten issue; Palin says it was not. The legislature ordered a review of the whole brou-ha-ha with a report due in October. Palin at first made all of the traditional noises about welcoming the chance to clear her name and promised to cooperate, but since joining the McCain team, a gaggle of high paid Republican Lawyers have descended on Alaska to block the review. The governor's office will not provide any of the documents requested by the committee and the lawyers have challenged the authority of the legislature to investigate the governor.

32. 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.

So, she (or her family) didn't try to get him fired through extra-legal means, but if they had, it would have been okay because the bitch had it coming. No doubt about it, Mike Wooten was a jerk. At the time, which was before Palin became governor, she wrote to the chief of the State Troopers and said not firing Wooten "would lead a rational person to believe there is a problem inside the organization."

33. yes, the state trooper was suspended when he was put under a court protective order

Legally, the issue of Wooten's bad behavior was taken care of before Palin became governor. Just to be clear, the Troopergate scandal involves the accusation that she (or her staff or her family) tried to revive the issue and force additional punishments on him after taking office.

34. no, the trooper wasn't fired

Yet. It certainly wasn't because of a lack of efforts on the part of her family to get him fired.

35. yes, she did fire the Wasilla Chief of Police as Mayor; yes, it was because he was lying to the City Council.

He says it was because he contributed to her opponent in the election and opposed a state bill to ease restrictions on concealed weapons, which she supported. There do appear to be two sides to this story. Why does Charlie assume her version is always the correct one?

36. 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.

While she did cut her own pay, she hired an administrator to help her do her job, adding another entire salary to the payroll.

37. 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.

She cut the amount that the legislature budgeted for the coming year, which was to include expansion of the Covenant House as well as it's annual operating budget. The WaPo reported this accurately.
The budget passed by the legislature in April appropriated five million for Covenant House, the organization that aided unwed mothers. This was a considerable increase over the previous budget. Palin made a line item change in the budget cutting that amount to 3.9 million, which is still an increase over the previous budget. To claim "she increased the budget" is quite a distortion and claims credit that properly belongs to the legislature. She allowed the legislature to to increase their budget, but not by as much as the legislature wanted. The WaPo blog reported this accurately, if not especially clearly.

38. No, she didn’t cut special needs student funding; yes, she did raise it by "only" 175 percent.

Ditto.
This is apparently an honest misunderstanding. The budget enacted in April 2008 included some changes in the education system recommended by a legislative committee the year before. This added some categories to the budget that were not in the previous budget. The claim that she cut the special needs budget comes from comparing the wrong two lines in the budget. First, the claim that the budget was reduced 62% comes from comparing the Department of Education and Early Development budget for special schools. Special schools are things like the school for the deaf and the military academy. The apparent cut was the result of one of the legislature's recommendation which moved the military school into a different budget category. In any case, the "special schools" line item is not where the "special needs" programs are funded. They are covered under something called the Foundation Program, which did indeed get an increase of about 175%.

The FactCheck.org report that corrected the facts on this item is entitled "Sliming Palin" which is just as inflammatory as any of the rumors it ties to debunk. The Weekly Standard's piece called it the "Newest Palin Smear." Look, budgets are big complicated documents and people have just started combing through the various Wasilla and state budgets that she had a hand in. Information will be trickling out for some time concerning these things and some of it will be wrong or misinterpreted. This does not always mean that there is a big shadowy conspiracy of Democrats and the "liberal mainstream media" to smear Palin.

I wonder who Charlie is quoting with the scare quotes around "only."

39. yes, she did try, clearly unsuccessfully, to get Bristol married off to her fiancee before the story came out

See # 28.

40. yes, she did ask the librarian if some books could be withdrawn because of being offensive; no, they couldn't; yes, it was "rhetorical", at least as was reported contemporaneously in 1996[1] ; 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

I'm not sure who said this was the first time in the history of civilization that someone has been threatened with being fired over a political dispute, but repetition of corruption doesn't make it less corrupt. The article Charlie links to has Palin claiming the discussions were just "rhetorical." The Library Director, Mary Ellen Emmons, clearly came away from the conversation less sure. "I'm hoping it was just a trial balloon," she told reporters at the time. The letter firing Emmons came four days after Palin quizzed her at a town council meeting. No administrative issues were mentioned at that time. Emmons was told she was not supportive of Palin's program.

41. 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.

Emmons says no titles were actually discussed. The list Charlie mentions includes the usual suspects that come up again and again when book banners gather.

42. 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."

"It's true even if it's not true" is an interesting reading of the quote. The writer seems to me to be saying "the issue is important even if the details are wrong and the press should continue to try to get to the bottom of it." What's wrong with that.

43. No, I don’t understand why a fake list is supposed to fill me with dread, either.

The comment is that having a book banner in office should fill you with dread, not that the list should fill you with dread. This one really bugged Charlie.

44. no, it wasn't won't be [bad tense, hasn't happened yet] a shotgun wedding; Bristol and Levi been engaged for a good while according to Levi's mother. It was either an accident or just an unconventional order.

See # 28. "Unconventional order." I like that. But the important issue is that no actual shotguns have been involved and only the liberal, rumor-mongering media would suggest otherwise.

45. 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.

Palin no longer regularly attends the Assembly of God church that she did for most of her life, but she hasn't completely broken with them. She still visits on occasion. She has made no statement suggesting she found the church "too weird."

46. 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.)

See # 45 and # 69.

47. No, she’s not from another planet. No, I haven't actually heard that one yet, but you wait. Okay, I have now heard it.

I can sympathize with Charlie here. I think I'd get a little testy and sarcastic if I had to dig through the world of internet and e-mail rumor mongering for too long. In fact, I am getting testy.

48. yes, she apparently believes in some variant of Intelligent Design

She hasn't actually used the phrase Intelligent Design, so it might be more accurate to use the older term Creationism since her own description of her opinion is that she thinks the world "looks created."

49. 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.

This is only somewhat correct. When asked about it during a campaign debate, she said "teach both" meaning science and creationism. Later she reduced that position to "I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class." She subsequently promised not to force creationism into the schools and has kept that promise. So, she is in favor of schools discussing creationism, but not in favor of formally putting it on the curriculum. That's a fairly sophisticated maneuver. She has managed to tell the religious right that she is on their side while reassuring the secular left that she won't poison the education system or cause expensive lawsuits to be filed against the state.

50. 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.

Her position hasn't been carved in stone on this and could cause some controversy with the base.

51. Yes, she did smoke marijuana, when it was legal in Alaska. Yes, she apparently did inhale.

And so did everyone else in Alaska in those days. This might cause some controversy with those who still call Clinton a "dope smoker" but it shouldn't bother anyone else.

The next group of "rumors" aren't really rumors since all are true and relatively public information. I suspect Charlie just added them for balance. Several of these have been mentioned in the press as part of the rustic character narrative put out by her Republican press team and eaten up by the mainstream media. Several of these biography details are no more critical than the fact that McCain was a POW or that he was born in Panama while his father was serving there in the Navy.

52. yes, she kills animals and eats them, and wears their skins

Millions of Americans hunt, most Americans eat meat, and most wear leather. Fur has fallen out of fashion in the Lower 48, but only a few radical vegans think using animal products should disqualify someone for public office. And who does that leave for them to vote for? Moose and caribou are both quite tasty and affordable to people in a state that has to bring most of its food in by ship from distant locations. I'll be glad when the media get over their infatuation with such trivia and get on to real reporting.

53. yes, she was a beauty contest contestant

Some people take this as evidence that she isn't serious enough to be in the line of succession. It should be no more of a disqualifier than having been a frat boy in college. Okay, that was a bad example.

54. yes, she was once a sportscaster

Ditto.

55. 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

No rumor here, but it is a clever opportunity to engage in a little more media bashing.

56. yes, she sometimes wears her hair up; no that’s not a "beehive"

Are we really down to parsing the correct name for her hairstyle? Haircare became presidential news back during the Reagan years (does he color it? Only his hairdresser knows for sure). Whoever started this annoying trend should be soundly beaten and drummed out of the press corps.

57. 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)

This could be an issue for some people, mostly Republicans. Charlie's cousins are absolutely correct. Some people have the impression that Inuit is the preferred PC noun for the people formerly known as Eskimos. That is not correct. Inuit is just one subgroup of the people who speak Eskimo languages, Canadian Eskimo to be exact. Alaskan Eskimos are Yup'ik in the west and Inupiaq in the north (spellings differ). There are a few smaller groups in between as well as Eskimos of Greenland and Siberia. Todd's kin, the Yup'ik, come from the area around Bristol Bay, which probably has something to do with his elder daughter's name. Just for the record, not all Alaskan natives are Eskimo. "Native" is an acceptable collective noun for Eskimo, Aleut, and Indian. "Aboriginal" is not. And yes, I'm just showing off because I know this stuff. It's not like I get use information like this very often.

58. yes, she has on occasion, as Mayor, tried to get money from the federal government.

The amount of earmarks that she got for Wasilla was high even by Alaskan standards. Alaska gets the highest per capita return from the federal government of any state. The point, of course, is not whether she did good by the citizens of Wasilla--she did--it's whether her claim to be an anti-earmark crusader is bogus--it is.
While Mayor, she hired Steven Silver, a former chief of staff to now-indicted GOP senator Ted Stevens, to help win federal earmarks for the city. The McCain campaign is referring to Silver as a "consultant," but he was a registered lobbyist with ties to Jack Abramoff, the corrupt lobbyist now doing time in federal prison. The amount of earmarks that she got for Wasilla was high even by Alaskan standards. Alaska gets the highest per capita return from the federal government of any state. The point, of course, is not whether she did good by the citizens of Wasilla--she did--it's whether her claim to be an anti-earmark crusader is bogus--it is.

59. yes, she did finally turn down the money for the bridge. Yes, that meant changing her mind about it.

That's certainly an abbreviated version of the story. To review, she was perfectly happy to accept the money and even campaigned in Ketchikan by saying she was personally offended that the press was calling Gravina Island "nowhere." In answer to question by the Anchorage Daily News she said she was in favor of taking the money, "The window is now -- while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist." It was only a year after she was elected and she realized the issue had become an unpopular symbol that she decided she was against it. This had nothing to do with a principled stand against earmarks. She did not become Ted Stevens' enemy over the issue (he endorsed her in the election and was still endorsing her when McCain tapped her for a new job). She turned like a weathervane with the changing winds of public opinion. The line "I told Congress 'thanks but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere," is a stock part of her stump speech and personal legend and is frankly dishonest.
That's certainly an abbreviated version of the story. To review, she was perfectly happy to accept the money and even campaigned in Ketchikan by saying she was personally offended that the press was calling Gravina Island "nowhere." In answer to question by the Anchorage Daily News she said she was in favor of taking the money, "The window is now -- while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist." It was only a year after she was elected and she realized the issue had become an unpopular symbol--even among Alaskans--that she decided she was against it. This had nothing to do with a principled stand against earmarks. She did not become Ted Stevens' enemy over the issue (he endorsed her in the election and was still endorsing her when McCain tapped her for a new job). She turned like a weathervane with the changing winds of public opinion.

Her "thanks but no thanks" line implies that she did not accept the money for the Gravina bridge. That's not the case. She kept the money and applied it to other transportation projects. By the time she canceled the Garvina bridge, the price had gone up and the state had already spent some of the money on other projects. Some might call those projects pork. The line "I told Congress 'thanks but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere," is a stock part of her stump speech and personal legend. A current McCain ad states it in even stronger terms: "she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere,” according to the voiceover. That is frankly dishonest.

60. 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.

This is a matter of definitions. Some sort of preliminary vetting may have been done in May when the McCain campaign compiled a list of possible VPs, but that hardly counts as "extensive." Who came to Wasilla in May? Who did they talk to? What information did they collect? That she was showed up on some peoples lists of candidates, such as his VJM Veepstakes, or that she she was pushed by a few pundits, most notably William Kristol, doesn't count as vetting in any sense of the word.

61. 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.

She went to five colleges in six years. I'm not sure who Charlie read that says that's illegal or that she didn't make anything of herself because of that. Lots of people are flaky when they are that age.

62. 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.

Are you saying that there are no Republicans left in Alaska who are not her sworn enemies or that the vetters should only have talked to her most adoring supporters? So, who did they talk to? They didn't talk to Republicans. They didn't talk to Democrats. They didn't talk to the press. They didn't ask for minutes from the Wasilla town clerk. Again, what makes this vetting "extensive"?

63. 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.

True, but her speech was given a day after Fred Thompson addressed the Republican convention and made the point of sneering at Obama's convention address as a "teleprompter speech". Palin's speech is interesting to some who get excited about process because it wasn't actually written for her. McCain took so long to decide on a running mate that his staff started writing the speech before they knew who would be reading it. The writer, Matthew Scully, customized it for her in the second draft. As a former television newsperson, she's very experienced in reading "teleprompter speeches."

64. 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.

McCain was not only wrong in claiming she sold the plane on eBay, he was also wrong when he claimed she made a profit on the deal. I've written about this before. The short version is that after failing to sell the plane on eBay, she allowed a Republican member of the state house to arrange the sale of the plane, at a loss of half a million dollars, to a Valdez businessman whose wife was a campaign contributor to both Palin and the congressman. Again, the carefully spun image of a plucky and practical crusader against corruption hardly stands up to scrutiny. By the way, congressman Harris is a republican who is still on speaking terms with her; why didn't the vetters talk to him?

65. 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 she and I barely remember "Little Black Sambo.") Yes, it seems unlikely to me that she’s be real racist and marry a Yup'ik (or a part Yup'ik.) But yes, people are capable of amazing things. Yes, I'm sure there are people who don’t like her — I've talked with some myself. And no, I don't think this waitress would have been thrilled to be called an "aboriginal". And yes, if she called Hillary a "bitch", I'm pretty confident is wasn't the first time anyone in politics has said that.

The idea that anyone could make Alaskans afraid to express opinions is pretty silly. As to the second part of this rumor: Sambo has not disappeared from the language. Marrying one minority does not imply a lack of prejudice toward other minorities. And, while many right wing sites are denouncing the LA Progressive story as a smear, no one I can find has yet come up with any real information to confirm or debunk the story about her saying "Sambo beat the bitch." Whether Charlie or I find it believable or not is irrelevant. At this point neither of us knows whether it is true.

66. 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.

Charlie is playing with definitions again. The rise in the average global temperature is so well documented that no one in their right mind still denies that it's happening. The official right-wing is now to deny that people have anything to do with it. Palin is clearly a denialist in that sense. The same day she was nominated, she told Newsmax, "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made."

67. Yes, Todd Palin did have a DUI. Twenty-two years ago. Get a grip.

Grip gotten.

68. No, Sarah Palin's brother isn't in jail. No matter what the commenter at Anderson Cooper's page says. (Thanks to Galynn in comments.)

Good catch.

69. Yes, Sarah Palin's pastor apparently does believe that gays can "repent" and be cured of homosexuality. No, believe it or not, even fundamentalist Christians don't have to believe every litle thing their pastor believes. Yes, Palin seems to be more libertarian about this.

On the other hand, Obama is responsible for every single thing Rev. Wright has said.

70. Yes, contrary to press reports, Sarah Palin's mother-in-law plans to vote for her and the R ticket (on Inside Edition this evening.)

When Palin's selection was first announced, her mother-in-law Faye Palin told the New York Daily News that she hadn't yet decided how she'd vote. It was a week later that she she announced her support for her daughter-in-law. So the press reports are not wrong, they are just out of date. But a little fact like that shouldn't get the way of some good press bashing.

71. No, the fact that some 17 year old was arrested for malicious mischief at the right time doens't mean Track Palin was. Goddamn, Josh, have you no shame at all?

That wasn't Josh Marshall who wrote that; it was some diarist called RE. Josh doesn't preview and approve every diary and comment that appears on TPM anymore than the CEO of Google checks out every post published on Blogger.

I want to thank Charlie for not adding to his list during the whole damn day it took me to research and write this. I'm now completely sick of Sarah Palin and plan to go think about woolly mammoths for a while. The next step in our rapid progression into ridiculousness will be for someone to write a rebuttal to my fisking of Charlie's debunking of everybody else's rumors.

Postscript: Naturally, if you have any additions or corrections to my fisking, put them in the comments. Links to supporting sources get you extra points. When you have enough points, you win a new president.