List @ 2115 Z (1515 MDT)

Cripes, this has gotten ridiculous. Folks, look, let's just run through a list here. (Updated.)

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.
   


2. Yes, there are people in Alaska who think she's too liberal.
   


3. 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, since 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.
   


4. 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.)
   


5. 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.
   


6. 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.)
   


7. 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.)
   


8. 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.
   


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


10. 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.
    


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


12. 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.)
    


13. 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. (Ever hear the phrase "Not my will, but Thine, be done"?)
    


14. 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.
    


15. yes, she was pregnant when she got married
    


16. 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.
    


17. 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.
    


18. 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.
    


19. 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.
    
    
    


20. 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
    


21. 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
    


22. 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.
    


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


24. no, the trooper wasn't fired
    


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


26. 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.
    


27. 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.
    


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


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


30. yes, she did ask the librarian if some books could be withdrawn because of being offensive; no, they couldn't; 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
    


31. 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.
    


32. 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."
    
    
    


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


34. no, it wasn't a shotgun wedding; Bristol and Levi been engaged for a good while according to his mother. It was either an accident or just an unconventional order.
    


35. 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.
    


36. 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.)
    


37. No, she's not from another planet. No, I haven't actually heard that one yet, but you wait.
    


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


39. 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.
    


40. 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.
    


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


42. yes, she was a beauty contest contestant
    


43. yes, she was once a sportscaster
    


44. 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
    


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


46. 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)
    


47. yes, she has on occasion tried to get money from the federal government.
    


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


49. 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.
    


50. 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.
    


51. 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.
    


52. 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.
    


53. 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.


54. 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 her and I barely remember "Little Black Sambo.") Yes, I'm sure there are people who don't like her --- I've talked with some myself.


55. 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.

Anyone who sees a new rumor, leave it in a comment. Update: The Other McCain has a better blurb than I did:

Charles Martin has established a clearinghouse for all the existing rumors about Sarah Palin, and any new ones you want to make up, if you want to try your hand at being a professional journalist like Elizabeth Bumiller.

2008-Sep-05 23:22 Update: Changed it to a numbered list. I'm beginning to think we need to start referring to these things by number.