Admits she used to 'hustle over the border' to 'get health care from Canada'
At a fundraiser on Friday for the Ohio Right to Life group, Palin assailed the media for getting "all wigged out about that" and claimed they're attacking her because they "couldn't argue the content" of the words.
Referring the crowd to a Bible passage from Isiah 49:16, she assured them she's "in good company."
"If what was good enough for God, scribbling on the palm of his hand, it's good enough for me, for us," Palin said. "In that passage he says, I wrote your name on the palm of my hand to remember you. And I'm like okay, I'm in good company."
The passage reads: "See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me."
A still-frame of Palin's speech at the Memphis, Tennessee convention revealed that the words she had written on her left hand were "Energy," "Tax cuts," and "Lift America's Spirits." She was later caught peeking at them during the question-and-answer session.
Mediaite notes that the crux of the substantive criticism was because Palin had criticized others for using notes during speeches. "What is ridiculous is that she’s still defending her cheat-notes after mocking Obama for using a teleprompter," wrote Drew Grant.
Blogger Gryphen at The Immoral Minority added, "I heard NUMEROUS reporters and pundits call her out on both the content of what she wrote on her hand during the teabagger convention as well as the fact that she had to write it down to remember it."
"Sarah Palin Has A God Complex," headlined liberal blogger Oliver Willis.
While her critics responded with amusement and derision, some of Palin's admirers were impressed. Two Tea Parties flashed her a celebratory "Go Sarah" note on their own palms during an appearance on Fox & Friends last week.
Admits she used to 'hustle over the border' to 'get health care from Canada'
In a recent speech she gave in Canada, Palin unveiled a childhood secret about her family seeking health care in a Canadian town. According to the Calgary Herald, she said:
"My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse. Believe it or not – this was in the ‘60s – we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada."
The Herald's Jason Markusoff claims that "[g]iven all the politician-turned pundit's warnings about the ills of expanding government role in U.S. health care (see: panels, death), this was, yep, pretty ironic-sounding."
The Washington Independent's David Weigel adds, "Palin spent the first few years of her life, up to age 6, in Skagway, a remote town in gold rush country only a few rough hours from Whitehorse. But it’s about as far from Skagway to Juneau, so the question remains why the family “hustled” to a country with, at the time, the beginnings of government-run health care."
The video is from the Ohio fundraiser, uploaded to YouTube by user Cynthiaabcd.
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