Since the announcement of her nomination, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has faced unprecedented public scrutiny. This is necessary, but when a relatively unknown candidate is thrust onto the national stage, the door is open to spread vicious rumors and outright lies.
Photo by Max Rinkel
Apparently the door to her personal e-mail is open as well. In a particularly reprehensible, not to mention illegal act, one of Palin’s detractors hacked into her personal Yahoo! e-mail account.
Once word got out, more critics put their morals and ethics on the shelf and went digging, hoping to find evidence that she had been conducting state business on her personal account.
So what was found? Pictures of her children, some prayer requests from friends and some correspondence with her lieutenant governor about a talk show host.
Brace yourself Dems, this attempt to defame Palin is about to blow up in your face.
Most rumors have been about Palin’s social views and were started as an attempt to paint her as some irrational religious zealot.
Palin does not advocate abstinence-only education. In her own words, as reported by the Los Angeles Times Sept. 6, “I’m pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues.”
She also does not want evolution taken out of schools. As governor, she never pushed the state Board of Education to add creationism to the required curriculum. She does, however, think that students should not be prohibited from discussing any theories that may arise.
Palin probably believes that abstinence is the only sure way to prevent unwed pregnancies and that God created us in His image. However, her record shows that she is willing to put her personal beliefs aside to act in the state interest.
So if our “religious fanatic” hasn’t been pushing her beliefs all over Alaska for the past two years, what has she been doing during her tenure has governor?
It hasn’t been social issues at all, but rather energy development and ethics reform that have been atop her list of priorities.
Work has begun on a natural gas pipeline, which would provide a stepping stone into the next generation of energy.
She not only battled corruption within her own party while on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, but she also passed sweeping ethics reform upon becoming governor.
She has a comparable level of experience to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, (although hers is executive and his is not,) and yet she is the vice-presidential running mate for a candidate who has much more experience than either of them. Perhaps vice presidential candidate Joe Biden provides the experience that Obama is lacking. Then again, Biden himself has already told us he should never even have been chosen for the ticket.
I am as confident in a McCain-Palin ticket as I can be, and about as confident in an Obama–Biden ticket as, well, Joe Biden.
Poole is a Wichita senior in political science and psychology.
Discussion
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But Sarah Palin DID, in fact, kill a baby seal with a creationism pamphlet while fornicating with a moose. I know because I read it on DailyKos.
She told a newspaper something after getting the nomination. That means what? She also told people in various speeches that she refused the money allocated in Congress for her state's infamous "bridge to nowhere" when that was a blatant lie.
Actually she's been saying this for years. This particular quote was from 2006, before she became governor.
As for the bridge, it was probably unwise to ever make it a talking point. Ask yourself though, how many of her critics actually know the whole story when they criticize her about it? What it comes down to is this: she supported it when she was running for governor and had reason to believe that it would be good for Alaskans. When it became clear that Alaskans would have to foot the bill, she no longer supported it. Simple as that. As for the earmarks associated with it - while it may be inconsistent with McCain, you might be surprised to know that Joe Biden has his own bridges in the closet and that he and Obama actually voted in FAVOR of "Palin's bridge to nowhere"!!
Okay, firstly: The fact that she wants Creationism added to required curriculum is a prime example of a major violation to the separation of church and state -- that's all! A violation to one of the most fundamental parts of democracy. Oh, but she'll open the topic up to debate! Well that'll make things all better -- what about the students who don't believe in God? What about the twenty students in one select class with differing religions? Religion is not a science, but rather an opinion that can be debated and argued infinitely, and yet no one will reach a definitive, correct answer. Meanwhile, class time is being wasted, when it could be better used avoiding the entire situation altogether. Religion (or lack thereof) should be something discussed at home, in private, or in church, because it is a PERSONAL matter. Hence, the policy of SEPARATION of church and state.
This completely contradicts the statement that she is willing to put aside her personal beliefs to act in the state's interest.
So what has she REALLY been doing BESIDES pushing her religious beliefs all over Alaskan citizens, and now the entire nation? As alaskan governor, she requested $3.2 million to study the genetics of harbor seals and the matings of harbor crabs -- Yet she still is just so confident that she and senator McCain will make sufficient budget cuts when elected into office.
And as far as Joe Biden goes, he did not say that "he should never have been chosen for the ticket" as you say in your column, but was being humble and showing respect to Hillary Clinton in saying that she could have perhaps been a better choice, what with her amount of experience.
But more importantly, I think that there are dozens of better VP candidates that McCain could have chosen besides Palin -- perhaps someone that he'd met more than once?
This is the most willfully ignorant opinion I've ever read in the Kansan.
You group not only her opponents but also all Democrats, journalists, internet rumor-mongerers, and idiot 4chan members into one coalition bent on burning Palin's image despite what lies it may take- it's not the Obama campaign's fault (or even the Democratic Party's fault!) that a dumb 20-year-old student "hacked" into her Yahoo! account- and by "hacked," please know that her password reset question was "What is my ZIP code?" - yet you angrily accuse all "Dems" for this breach of privacy as an "attempt to defame" your vice presidential candidate. However, even though the move was indeed illegal, a campaign spokesman said Palin and her aides "used their private e-mail addresses for state business" and that "the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account "when there was significant state business."" (NY Times)
You say she is a portrait of ethics reform? While she did shake up the oil companies' hold on Alaska during her stint on the Oil and Gas Commission, she has also endorsed and raised money for Ted Stevens on various campaigns in the last decade and is currently under an ethics investigation- that she is refusing to cooperate with- for firing a state employee that refused to fire the ex-husband of her sister after their messy divorce. Among her list of reasons why the ex-husband should have been divorced was that he shot a moose out of season- to later clean and cook for the extended Palin family. Sarah was in attendance.
In reply to your recent comment, not only is Palin's Bridge To Nowhere history reprehensible but so are her lies about it and her insistence that she has been and always will be against earmarks. This instance was the most horrific abuse of the earmark system in recent years, and even though she did cease her support, she kept the hundreds of millions of dollars that had been already allotted by Congress. But instead of explaining that she had used the money for a more practical purpose, she just blatantly lied to the American public about it, to 28 million viewers like you. While John McCain worked to keep his state earmarks low (an very respectable $51 per capita), Sarah Palin worked as hard as she could to abuse the system to receive more earmarks, both as Alaska governor and mayor of Wasilla (pop. 8000), which received an average of $1,000 per capita in both state and federal earmarks during her mayoral years.
Despite all that money, she STILL left the town with $20 million in debt, including nearly $100,000 for a remodel of the mayor's office and a Suburban for the mayor's use. She billed the state $17,000 over her first full year as governor for 312 per diems- allowances for high-ranking public officials when they work away from their home- even though she spent the vast majority of those nights in her home in Wasilla while working the days in the nearby city of Anchorage (a 45-minute drive according to mapquest.com). She squeezed her citizens out of an extra $17,000 so she could make $142,000 a year instead of just $125,000. She has a history of picking her high school classmates, people with little relevant experience to state positions (or worse- both!)- including a high school friend who was a real estate agent to Director of the State Division of Agriculture, a borough assemblyman to be Attorney General, a former classmate who ran a franchise for Mailboxes, Etc. as economic developments manager, and another classmate as legislative director.
While rumors about Trig being her daughter's son rather than her own and others that vicious are blatantly false and are indeed reprehensible, and while facts like her husband's activity in the Alaskan Independence Party fifteen years ago are today irrelevant, facts about Sarah Palin lead not only Democrats but independent voters like me and Republican voters like my parents to go from an undecided stance between Obama and McCain to decidedly Obama. John McCain has proven to us on his first major decision as potential president that he lacks the judgment to make a solid decision of that gravity. Will his cabinet be full of similarly ill-advised and incompetent picks? How about his chief advisers? The fact is that John McCain is the oldest man to ever run for a first term in office and he has had recurring cancer four times- frankly, I very much trust John McCain, but if he were to be unable to finish his time in the presidency I would be mortified of how Sarah Palin would handle it, with her history of financial mishandling of state and city finances, questionable ethics calls, irresponsible appointments, and her lack of understanding about many of the important issues currently relevant on the national level (see: her interview with Charlie Gibson, where she struggles to even repeat talking points and doesn't know what the "Bush doctrine" is).
And finally, you say Joe Biden has said that he believes he shouldn't have been picked for the vice presidency? Not only did he not say that he "shouldn't have ever been chosen," as you put it, he instead talks about Hillary Clinton's qualifications, as an effort to re-woo Hillary Clinton's former supporters. This is such a gross stretch of his meaning that as a journalist, you should be ashamed. But instead, you're pro-McCain/Palin. Go figure.
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