Wednesday, September 10, 2008
No, FactCheck.org isn't sliming Palin (don't mean to pull an Us Weekly there), but they did look in to some of the nonsense being spread about her. Good to have it all in one place: False Internet claims and rumors fly about McCain's running mate.
We've been flooded for the past few days with queries about dubious Internet postings and mass e-mail messages making claims about McCain's running mate, Gov. Palin. We find that many are completely false, or misleading.
- Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn't cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years.
- She did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library. Some of the books on a widely circulated list were not even in print at the time. The librarian has said Palin asked a "What if?" question, but the librarian continued in her job through most of Palin's first term.
- She was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a group that wants Alaskans to vote on whether they wish to secede from the United States. She's been registered as a Republican since May 1982.
- Palin never endorsed or supported Pat Buchanan for president. She once wore a Buchanan button as a "courtesy" when he visited Wasilla, but shortly afterward she was appointed to co-chair of the campaign of Steve Forbes in the state.
- Palin has not pushed for teaching creationism in Alaska's schools. She has said that students should be allowed to "debate both sides" of the evolution question, but she also said creationism "doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."
We'll be looking into other charges in an e-mail by a woman named Anne Kilkenny for a future story. For more explanation of the bullet points above, please read the Analysis.
The problem for Obama and his media and Internet-lunatic supporters is that they've thrown so much mud at Palin and done it so disgustingly that any meaningful criticism of her is getting lost. She's obviously well to the right of me, and no doubt she has positions and actions that I'd find off-putting, but at this point anything said about her has as much credibility as the conspiracy theories about her governing Alaska while wearing a fat suit and pretending to give birth to a Down's Syndrome baby.
At work, I confine my amusement to pointing out to people ranting about how Alaska isn't a real state that it's larger in both population and economy than Howard Dean's Vermont. It's amazing how many people don't know that -- the population difference is a bit of trivia, but anyone with a brain should be able to realize which state has a much larger GDP!