The Election is Coming! The Election is Coming!

As we look toward the beginning of the 2012 Presidential campaign, which we all know will only truly begin once Sarah Palin announces her candidacy, it is important that those of us who support her be prepared to combat the media's four year old smear campaign against her.


Many who are not familiar with Sarah Palin believe she is exactly what they have seen and heard from Tina Fey, the Saturday Night Live comedienne (using that word very loosely).  Others believe the five and ten second sound bites of untruths, lies and twisted logic presented by the media.


As our candidate-to-be has already shown us, this will be a campaign like no other in history.  Because our candidate is waging a campaign that has never been seen before, we, as supporters, must  behave in ways never expected before as well.


We must prepare ourselves to meet with objections, answer questions and counter the garbage that has been allowed to filter into people's minds unabated about the person we know to be the best man, woman for the job in 2012.   If someone presents us with a reason not to vote for Sarah, we must be ready with an answer.  If someone presents us with one of the media's lies, we must be ready with the truth.  We are the media of this campaign!  We are the ones to spread the truth.


Here are some of the most blaring misquotes/lies/untruths about Sarah Palin:

• "I can see Russia from my house"

WHERE DID IT COME FROM:  Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live said it.  She was making fun of Sarah Palin’s statement, “They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska,” in her September 11, 2008 interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson.


THE TRUTH: The island of Little Diomede, Alaska and the island of Big Diomede, Russia are only 2.4 miles apart.  You can indeed see Russia from land in Alaska.

LINKS:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5782924&page=3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diomede_Islands

•  Sarah Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent

WHERE DID IT COME FROM: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.


“Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months.


LINKS: 
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/palin_africacontinent_statements_prove_to_be_a_hoax/

•  Does Sarah Palin believe in shooting wolves from airplanes?

WHERE DID IT COME FROM: A wildlife group's ad attacks Palin for supporting the shooting of wolves from airplanes. She does, but there's more to it than that.


Alaskan officials call it "predator control," not aerial hunting, and use it to keep the populations of moose and caribou high for subsistence hunters.


The program is limited to just 9 percent of the state's land mass, or five of 26 Department of Fish and Game districts. Far from being endangered, as they are in the Lower 48 states, gray wolves number between 7,000 and 11,000 in Alaska.


Studies indicate that predators (wolves and bears) often take 70 percent to 80 percent of the moose and caribou that die each year in Alaska. Research by the state Department of Fish and Game shows that "a single wolf eats 12-13 moose in a typical year and/or 30-40 caribou, mostly calves."


The program exists in large part because the state's intensive game management law puts a premium on efforts to "restore the abundance or productivity of identified big game prey populations as necessary to achieve human consumptive use goals." The "big game prey" in question are the approximately 1 million caribou and 175,000 to 200,000 moose in the state. Subsistence hunters are a major priority in wildlife management in Alaska.




LINKS:
http://factcheck.org/2008/09/call-of-the-wild/

• Did she say that Concord and Lexington were in New Hampshire instead of Massachusetts?

WHERE DID IT COME FROM:  While this comment was attributed to Governor Sarah Palin in the media, it was actually made by Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. (The article has since been corrected and the misrepresentation removed, although a bleb regarding it appears at the end of the article.)


LINKS: 

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51179.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/11/sarah-palin-emails

•  Was she wrong in what she stated about Paul Revere’s ride?

WHERE DID IT COME FROM? Multiple sources (I’ll just list the same article above) stated how wrong she was on her statement about Paul Revere’s ride. 


THE TRUTH: After the media berated Governor Palin for her description of Paul Revere's ride, the historians began chiming in to say that she had the history correct, many citing Paul Revere's own letter dated 1789 stating exactly what Sarah Palin had stated, including the ringing of bells!


LINKS: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/11/sarah-palin-emails

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1343353

You can probably think of even more examples of how the media has tried to misrepresent what Sarah Palin has said.  When they are unable to do that, they have just out and out lied. 

It is our responsibility as citizens to educate the populace to the truth, to the one viable candidate for President in 2012.  

Be the Media!  

Teach your friends, your neighbors, your community.  As Paul Revere might say, "The election is coming!"