What Caught My Eye Today

Sarah Palin - Guess who wrote herself one whopper of book? Shockingly, there are some, like the Associated Press, that question the validity of some of the claims made in the tome. Sarah Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time. Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition. Clearly this is just another pathetic attempt by leftist liberals to smear the reputation of a true-blue American. I cannot imagine what these whack jobs could possibly question about Palin. Let's see what they came up with.

• Claim: Palin rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, "you'll have to be brave enough to fail."
  Fact: Palin is blurring the lines between Obama's stimulus plan and the federal bailout that Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted for and President George W. Bush signed
• Claim: Palin says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and "showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all."
  Fact: The estate tax, which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president. Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8%, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2%, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb.
• Claim: Palin says Obama has admitted that the climate change policy he seeks will cause people's electricity bills to "skyrocket."
  Fact: In January 2008, Obama told San Francisco Chronicle editors that under his cap-and-trade climate proposal, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" as utilities are forced to retrofit coal burning power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Democratic legislation now before Congress calls for a variety of measures aimed at mitigating consumer costs. Several studies predict average household costs probably would be $100 to $145 a year.
• Claim: In describing her resistance to federal stimulus money, Palin describes Alaska as a practical, libertarian haven of independent Americans who don't want "help" from government busybodies.
  Fact: Alaska is one of the states most dependent on federal subsidies, receiving much more assistance from Washington than it pays in federal taxes. A study for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that in 2005, the state received $1.84 for every dollar it sent to Washington.

See? They got nothing. Nothing at all.

Iran - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cannot be removed from his post because his legitimacy comes from God. Sure it was. Perhaps I should give them the benefit of the doubt. Seriously, who would make such an outlandish claim without some basis in fact to back that statement up? A Khamenei representative in the elite Revolutionary Guards, told a gathering of Khamenei's representatives in Iranian universities that the clerical body that chose him, the Assembly of Experts, could not remove him. "The members of the assembly ... do not appoint the Supreme Leader, rather they discover him and it is not that they would be able to remove him any time they wish so." I stand corrected. In theory, Khamenei can be removed by the 86-man Assembly of Experts, which approved him as successor to Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. But the system has never been tested. And in reality, it probably never will be.

Russia - Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev has proposed reducing the number of time zones spanning his vast country. He did not say by how many, but Russia currently has 11 time zones. President Medvedev said, when he raised the issue in his state of the nation speech, that Russians had "traditionally been accustomed to feeling a pride" in how many time zones the country had "because to us it seemed a vivid illustration of the greatness of our motherland". Makes sense, if you think about it. It's not like these poor slobs have any awful lot to cheer about these days. "Screw those capitalist Western pigs. Those puny countries have only one timezone. Even the Americans can only boast of 5. Mother Russia has 11. Who's the man now?" A spokesperson for Royal Observatory in Greenwich says it is not actually very difficult to go about changing a country's time zones. "The most important thing is to make sure that everyone knows about it. If that is done, there shouldn't be any problems whatsoever," he said. No problems whatsoever? Right. I'll believe it when I see it.

Sexual Harassment - Florida police say a man arrested for repeatedly calling 911 looking for sex claimed it was the only number he could dial after running out of cell phone minutes. So that rumor about 911 operators being hot and horny is true? You hear about such things as plots in adult movies, but never in a million years would I have imagined that there was something to this. Tampa police said the caller made sexual comments to the 911 dispatcher and asked if he could come to her house. Investigators say she hung up, but he called back four more times. You go, boyfriend. Everyone knows "no" really means "yes". He was arrested about 15 minutes later at his home and charged with making a false 911 call. The man reportedly told officers that he didn't think he would get in trouble for calling 911. Dude, you know that 911 calls are tracked from the source of the call, right? Didn't think this one all the way through did you, spark plug?