Everything about Palin: information, factchecks, links

A friend asked me for some information about Sarah Palin yesterday, and here is what I pulled together for her.

Ethics and lying:

• Troopergate background
• Palin tries to stop Troopergate investigation
• Palin delays cooperation on Troopergate; husband ignores subpoena; poll finds two-thirds of Americans believe they should cooperate with the investigation
• More ethics problems
• Lies and distortions in her Republican convention speech
• Governor Palin giggles while radio DJs call an Alaska state senator a "bitch" during an interview
• At least a dozen, documented, unretracted lies
• Palin has accepted $25,000 in gifts from industry representatives while governor

Record in Alaska:

• Hired a Washington lobbyist while mayor of a town of 6000; as governor, has requested more earmark dollars per person than any other governor
• Flip-flopped on the Bridge to Nowhere and continues to repeat the lie
• But she built the Road to Nowhere with millions of your tax dollars (video is at the end of this post)
• Palin was the only mayor in Alaska to force rape victims to pay for their own rape kits
• Palin charges Alaska for living in her own home while governor
• Palin's fiscal record as mayor
• Cut programs for teen moms; opposed sex education
• Letter from a fellow resident of Wasilla
• Palin hired friends, intimidated reporters in Alaska

Readiness to be VP:

• Palin unaware of Bush's central philosophy on national security
• Palin uncertain what the VP does
• Alaska in perspective
• Palin has only visited Canada, Mexico, and Kuwait (she now admits her claims that she had also been to Ireland and Iraq are false)
• She admits that she has never met a foreign leader (every living VP had done so before being elected to that office)

Palin's church:

• Wants to "cure" gays
• Pastor believes church needs to get ready when people flood Alaska during the coming "end times"; Palin attended a Jews for Jesus sermon in August

AND BOTTOM LINE: she just doesn't know what she's talking about. Watch her answer a fairly simple question about the financial industry meltdown:

(More video here and here)