The political room of the JoyEngine headquarters has been busy organizing the Palin truths from the Palin myths. Here are a few of the fact and fictitious comments we’ve researched so you can get to know your candidates.
Palin once backed the Bridge to Nowhere. (fact)
Palin has links (her husband) to the Alaska Independence Party, which harbors the goal of seceding from the union that McCain and Palin seek to lead. (fact)
Palin’s professional career includes: Television sports reporter, 1987-89; co-owner, commercial fishing operation, 1988-2007; owner, snow machine, watercraft and all-terrain vehicle business, 1994-97; chairwoman, Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, 2003-04. (fact)
Palin’s professional career also includes: Member of Polar Bears at Risk - Finding your piece of ice (fiction)
Sarah Palin accepted at least $4,500 in campaign contributions in the same fundraising scheme at the center of a public corruption scandal that led to the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens. (fact)
Palin was in Girls Gone Wild, Northern Lights Exposed (fiction)
Palin opposed the U.S. government’s listing of a variety of animals as endangered, including the polar bear and the beluga whale, both of which inhabit areas also rich in oil and natural gas. (fact)
When she played basketball in high school, Sarah Palin, earned the nickname “Sarah barracuda” for her fierce competitiveness. (fact)
Sarah Palin coded the original prototype for Facebook. (fiction)
As governor, Palin relied on an earmark system she now opposes. Taken along with the Bridge to Nowhere stuff, this threatens to undercut her reformist image, something that is key to her selection as McCain’s VP candidate. (fact)
Palin’s 17-year-old daughter became pregnant out of wedlock at a time when the conservative base had finally started rallying behind McCain’s candidacy. Barely moments after McCain advisers put out word that McCain had known of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, the Anchorage Daily News revealed that Palin’s own spokesperson hadn’t known about it only two days ago. A senior McCain adviser at the Republican convention was forced into the rather embarrassing position of arguing that McCain had known about the pregnancy “last week” — without saying what day last week he knew about it. It came out that Republican lawyers are up in Alaska vetting Palin — now, more than 72 hours after it was announced that she’d been picked. (fact)