...by reading Joe McGinniss' The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin:
1. She was elected mayor of Wasilla in a low-turnout election by a bizarre alliance of fundamentalist Christians and bar owners. The Christians were told by their pastors she was God's choice for mayor. The bar owners were behind her because she was against the campaign to require Wasilla bars to close at 2 a.m. instead of 5. Palin said that telling bar owners when to close was government interference with free enterprise.
2. When she was first elected mayor, a supporter and friend was worried about Palin's ignorance of certain subjects. She tried to give a Palin a book on economics. Palin refused to accept it. The friend urged her to. Palin again refused, saying, "I never read anything that might conflict with my beliefs."
3. Shortly after her election she appropriated over $50,000 that had been budgeted for road repair and improvement to redecorate her office.
4. During her second term as mayor, she had a multimillion-dollar sports complex built. It cost $15 million. The entire Wasilla city budget at the time was $20 million.
5. She had the complex built on land the city did not have clear title to. Land that could have been purchased for $125,000 cost the city $1.5 million in legal fees.
6. Gary Wheeler, the head of the Governor of Alaska's security detail, said that Palin dispensed with the normal practice of state troopers serving as the governor's drivers. She drove herself. He said, "...she didn't want us around. She didn't want anybody to follow her to Nordstrom's when she went shopping every day....Overall, she didn't want anybody to know that she wasn't coming in until ten AM and then leaving by three to go home."
7. She once kicked out two house guests (a married couple) because she suspected them of having sex in her...house.
8. When Palin's sister Molly filed for divorce, Sarah filed a complaint against her brother-in-law (a state trooper) for professional misconduct, specifically domestic violence. When state police sergeant Ron Wall questioned her on the matter he found her account so unbelievable that he said to Palin at one point, "We don't mean to frustrate you with facts, but our life is fact-driven, okay?"
9. When making appointments to state positions, Palin appointed high-school friends with no qualifications that matched the job descriptions.
10. Many pictures have been taken of Sarah Palin when she was with child. And she looks pregnant in all of them—except for pictures taken during the eight months before Trig's birth.
2 comments:
Well, you knew #10 already :) Thanks for reading this book so the rest of us don't have to. But did you think it was worth it?
Oh it was absolutely worth it. Rogue is a great read, and there is a lot of good stuff I didn't include in this blog because it's not the sort of information you can convey concisely.
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