Advertisements

This morning, Malia Litman (owner of MaliaLitman’s “A Rebuttal to the Rogue” blog) alerted PoliticusUSA that she had uncovered a rather large lie Sarah Palin has been peddling to the American public. Litman did an exhaustive investigation which revealed that Palin has been fooling the American people about a fundamental aspect of who she is as a person.

For two years now, we’ve been sold the notion of Palin as Mama Grizzly, the great hunter and fisher woman who spends her free time hunting up meat that she then whips up into a delicious moose stew for her huge family, all while traipsing around the country selling “feminism” as something which no longer involves women being equal partners, having their freedoms, or having dominion over their own bodies.

Turns out, this is a lie. Sarah Palin doesn’t hunt, or if she does, she does it illegally.

Advertisements

Here’s the background courtesy of Ms Litman’s blog :

“On Monday, September 13, 2010 Palin was in Kansas City giving another speech. It was the specific comments in that speech that alerted me to the deception that Palin has promoted throughout the last two years. She mentioned that she had “recently gone hunting in Alaska, and still had caribou blood under her fingernails. Furthering the deception, Palin said “We eat, therefore we hunt.” The idea that (Palin) would appear for a speech with her hair and make-up done, with blood under her beautifully manicured nails, was too hard to believe. (Palin) had gone too far! Palin was either lying when she made this comment, or she was announcing from her podium that she had violated Alaska’s hunting laws. A casual observer would assume (Palin) was smart enough to be alert to violation of the Alaska hunting laws after the controversy surrounding Troopergate, and Mike Wooten’s disclosure that he shot a moose out of season. A casual observer would be in error to make that assumption.”

Here is the evidence Ms Litman amassed:



“1. On Saturday, Aug. 28th Sarah Palin was with Glenn Beck at the Restoring Honor Rally in Washington D.C.

2. On Saturday, Aug. 28th the Alaska Fish and Game Department announced that it would close the Fortymile caribou herd hunt after a single day. The reason for the decision to close the hunt after one day was that last year in just three days, hunters killed 870 caribou. Given the declining numbers of caribou, the Alaskan Fish and Game Department announced that hunting of caribou would cease at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 29th.

3. The distance between Washington D.C. and Anchorage Alaska is 3369 miles. Even a direct flight, with no delays would take 7 hours and 30 minutes. It seems reasonable to presume that Sarah Palin didn’t travel from Washington D.C. on Sunday Aug. 29th for 7 and one-half hours, drive to Wasilla, and then go caribou hunting in what was left of her day on Sunday. If she hunted after that day, it would have been in violation of the prohibitions enacted by the Alaska Fish and Game Department. What we do know is that she gave an interview to Fox “News” the evening of Aug. 31, 2010 wearing a pink suit. There was no indication from that interview that she had been out hunting or that she had encountered any difficulty removing any caribou blood from her hands, face, or body.

4. According to the Alaska Fish and Game Department, as of September 16, 2010 there was no record of a hunting license for Sarah Palin.

5. Upon further inquiry I was advised by the person employed with the Alaska Fish and Game Department that Sarah Palin had not held a license for 2008 or 2009.

6. Because the Alaska Fish and Game Department is committed to protecting animals that might be hunted in the state, the number of hunters allowed to hunt during the designated season (even if it is only one day long) is limited. Because there are often many more hunters than animals, the Fish and Game Department holds a lottery to determine which hunters will be allowed to hunt. This lottery is held in November and December of the year prior to the August season in which the hunters are allowed to hunt. Thus the lottery to determine which hunters would be allowed to hunt in August of 2010 would have been determined by lottery at the end of 2009.

7. In order to be registered for the lottery, a hunter would be required to have a license to hunt in Alaska. Thus, because Sarah Palin did not have a license to hunt in 2009, she could not have participated in the lottery, and thus would not have been allowed to hunt caribou at any time during 2010.

8. In searching the internet for the pictures of Sarah Palin hunting, the only pictures I can find are pictures of Palin with dead animals, but she is not holding a gun or knife and there is no blood on her hands.

Only two possibilities exist. Either Palin lied in Kansas when she said she had been hunting caribou in Alaska and had blood under her fingernails, or Palin hunted in violation of Alaska law, and without a license. In either case, Palin is dishonest.”

This is a quandary we often find ourselves in when reporting on Palin. There are so many little lies which buttress the big lie, that one can be lost. But in the end, the glaring fact of Palin’s perpetual dishonesty is always apparent.

A note should be made that Palin was caught and charged with a felony crime for fishing without a license. Alaska state records show that she was charged in June of 1993, and pled no contest, to the charge which was originally listed as a felony. There is also a second charge of fishing without a license in the court records, but that charge was dismissed.

So it looks like Palin did fish at one time and did it without a license. But there is no evidence that Palin has been hunting for a long while now. Levi Johnston (almost son-in-law and father of daughter Bristol’s baby) revealed that Palin never hunted and in fact, Palin asked him to show her how to operate the gun she kept under her bed. We’ll just skip over the implications of that and the unfortunate history of Levi recanting and then un-recanting said accusations, but one can’t help but notice a similar echo here. Palin is not who she says she is.

Palin grew up hunting at her father’s knee. This seems to be accurate. But many of us grew up doing things we no longer do as adults, as seems to be the case here. This rings as accurate to me as it fits in with the way Palin lies. She takes a bite out of something that had some truth at some point and then spins it to her own advantage, much like the obnoxious drunk party goer who regales a suicidal audience with stories of his highly exaggerated greatness. The kindest thing that can be said about such people is that they are great story tellers. And Palin is indeed a wonderful story teller.

The image of Palin as the frontier pioneering woman from Alaska is a fraud on many levels. This is the latest unveiling of the image, but what should be most disconcerting is the ease with which Palin lies about anything. If it sounds good, if she thinks the voters or book buyers or speech payers will like it, she says it.

While it might seem like a small lie, Palin is selling her personality. She is running a cult of personality, not on an actual governing record or particular belief system. The things she claims to stand for (small government, fiscal conservatism) are not accurate statements about her actual governing policies. Nor do these discrepancies seem to bother her followers, who devour Palin’s narrative like starving children with nary a question as to the source. As Malia notes, Palin devoted an entire page in her hagiography “Going Rogue” to pictures of herself as the great huntress.

Anyone who lies this easily and about things so easily proven false and not even particularly relevant other than in propping up a false image is not someone who can be trusted at the helm of any office.

When Sarah Palin speaks, when she says the sky is blue, you should always double check. Rarely will it be true.