Many bloggers who are strong of stomach and long on patience have, this week, had both of those attributes tried by the fire of a pure bullshit bomb in the form of Sarah Palin’s perfidious pander to her jerkwater constituency, “Going Rogue.” What emerges from the stinking sewer of Palin’s fantasies is exactly nothing. Many have tried to parse her prevarications, but with limited luck. The lies are so numerous that documenting them becomes an exercise in absurdity, like trying to explain all the jokes in the Monty Python catalogue to a space alien after translating the entire thing to esperanto. There is no center. No relationship with objective reality. But this may not be the end.
Sarah has lied about so many people, in so many provable instances, that her next stop might just be in a court room. And it won’t be silly Sarah suing Trig-truthers, either, because that’s a battle she knows won’t go well for her. Otherwise she’d already have done it. In fact, as much as Sarah has claimed that she has been libeled, she has yet to put her money where her mouth is. But those she’s libeled may not be similarly hampered. There are many people who Palin pillories in her little fantasy cum memoir, who actually have provable cases. Any odds on who decides to take her to court for a chunk of the change she made with her fibs and fables? Mike Wooten, anyone? Maybe he’s finally had enough.
Presumably, some in the media received advance copies of the ditz queen’s screed against librul media and bad bloggers. Apparently, she was unaware that this would happen, and unaware that, in certain quarters, people might actually check what she wrote against known facts. Here’s her Facebook post from yesterday:
As you probably have heard, the AP snagged a copy of my memoir, Going Rogue, before its Tuesday release. And as is expected, the AP and a number of subsequent media outlets are erroneously reporting the contents of the book. Keep your powder dry, read the book, and enjoy it! Lots of great stories about my family, Alaska, and the incredible honor it was to run alongside Senator John McCain.
Looks like it. If the account reportedly related in her book, which is presumably her own account, can be counted on. Only she calls it a miscarriage even though it was a D&C. A miscarriage is a spontaneous event, which, according to her, this wasn’t. She was having an ultrasound and listening for a heartbeat, which turned out not to be there. Then she had a D&C. A D&C while you’re actually pregnant is an abortion. From Palingates blog, apparently the first to pick up this statement, here are the excerpts that describe the situation:
I waited expectantly for the familiar shoosh-shoosh-shoosh sound of the baby’s beating heart. But it didn’t come. And the sonogram picture looked empty. The doctor said coldly, “There is nothing alive in there….When the doctor’s bill arrived in our mailbox, it came with a typo. In the box describing the procedure, someone had typed “Abortion”. Instead of starting over with a fresh form, they painted it over with a thin layer of Wite-Out, and retyped, “Miscarriage”. For some reason it just felt like salt in the wound.
They called it an abortion, because it was one. I don’t blame anyone, who isn’t a hypocrite, for aborting a dead fetus. It’s dead, after all. But this is the same nitwit who decries all abortion, and especially late term, abortions which are overwhelmingly performed because there is no viable baby involved.
We do have one quibble with this issue, if it weren’t for the fact that she loves to make issue of her reproductive life: no male candidate is ever expected to account for his entire reproductive history. Ever. Picture the world in which they were. Smarter women have NOT let this become a part of their political lives, and for Sarah to introduce the assumption that a woman’s whole reproductive history is part of her candidacy is incredibly damaging to women. But then, she’s a moron.
Well, it appears that out bemoaning the lack of fact checking by media outlets may have been premature. This from daily beastie today:
Sarah Palin’s long-awaited memoir may have gone rogue from the facts, according to the Associated Press’ advance look at her book. The former vice-presidential candidate depicts herself as someone who is frugal with taxpayer money when traveling and who rejected donations from powerful corporations, the AP says, but her record indicates otherwise. The former Alaskan governor stayed at a luxurious New York City hotel with her daughter in 2007. She says her gubernatorial campaign took mostly small donations from first-time givers, but more than half her war chest came from people and PACs who gave at least $500. And she blurs the lines between the Obama stimulus plan and the federal bailout that President George W. Bush signed. She implies that Ronald Reagan repealed the “death tax” (he didn’t). She says she stood against conflicts of interest, but pushed for a special zoning exception so she could sell her family’s $327,000 house. The book “has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto.”
From the AP article we see that she repeats lies about the pipeline, yet again. She really has little reason to stop lying, however, since her fan base absolutely doesn’t care or have the mental capacity to notice. Here’s a bit:
PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.
THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp. Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders during the process, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.
And then there’s the bit that goes straight to the heart of Palin’s deepest, most hypocritical bullshittery, her “we don’t need no federal guvment,” crap.
PALIN: 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.
THE FACTS: Alaska is also 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.
The facts, here, gets it a bit wrong. Alaska isn’t “one of the most dependent on federal subsidies.” It is THE MOST DEPENDENT on federal subsidies bar none.
A hilarious list of the ditz queen’s top ten scintillating observations, post campaign. Particularly funny is her account of her reading:
7. Her Literary Taste Tends Toward the 7th Grade Palin’s favorite books are middle school classics The Pearl by John Steinbeck and Animal Farm by George Orwell, the latter of which she considers an uplifting political story. If those pigs beat the odds, so can I.
Look, people. Animal Farm and The Pearl are commonly assigned in either middle or high school. Ditto The Scarlet Letter, Catcher in the Rye, and a number of others that routinely turn up on the MySpace books section of kids’ profiles, which do nothing more than reveal that the owner of the page has actually only read about five books that were assigned reading. My twenty-two year old son has a much more varied and sophisticated books list on his MySpace than Sarah manages to come up with. What she reveals is that she’s anything but a voracious reader.
Sarah Palin, apparently, claims in her book that she had legal fees as a result of McCain campaign vetting of her. On it’s face the claim makes little sense. The campaign has staff that does the vetting, what little they actually did. Here’s what a McCain staffer had to say about this assertion:
She was particularly upset about having to pay $50,000 (£30,000) in legal bills which she says were directly related to the party’s vetting process for the vice-presidential candidacy.
According to Mrs Palin, she was told that the bills would be paid if they won the election but not if they lost.
Trevor Potter, the McCain campaign’s lawyer, yesterday rejected the charge, saying Mrs Palin was never asked to pay such legal expenses and nor did she ever reveal that her own lawyer had charged her for vetting-related work.
Let’s see if the press, such as it is, calls her on this. Anyone want to place bets on just how likely that is?
The AP video above does a great job of parroting the Palin book, but what Sarah desperately needs and what the country needs, is for them to do something press-like and fact check the prevaricating bitch. Here’s what a campaign insider said about Palin playing victim of the press.
via Andrew Sullivan, it’s a must read.
One of the whackiest claims Sarah Palin makes in her new book is that she agreed to her disastrous interview with Katie Couric — a central event during Campaign 2008 — because a top McCain aide told her Couric had low self esteem, leading Palin to take pity on the CBS anchor.
A McCain adviser I just spoke to adamantly denied the claim, and provided a counter story: Palin was repeatedly urged by McCain aides to prepare for the interview, but refused.
Palin claims in her new book that she agreed to sit down with Couric partly because she felt sorry for her, after senior McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace told her that Couric suffered from self-esteem problems. It’s understandable that Palin would try to deflect blame for the interview: It was a disaster that hastened her unmasking as unqualified for the presidency.
“It’s not true,” the McCain adviser I just reached said, laughing heartily at the claim. “It’s ridiculous.”
The adviser also provided more details on the strategy the campaign adopted with Palin and the press, saying they feared making her available to groups of reporters because of her incompetence.
“She lacked the knowledge base to stand in front of the press corps that was traveling with her and answer questions,” the adviser said delicately. “Because of the success of the convention speech, the feeling was that she should be exposed to as many people as possible directly, not through a media filter. The way to do that was to do interviews with the anchors.”
“The truth is, she refused to prepare for the Katie Couric interview,” the adviser continued. “She refused to engage in any preparation. And it was a disaster.”
The adviser also mocked a contradiction at the core of Palin’s claims: She’s simultaneously saying she was muzzled and kept from the press, even as she’s claiming she only did the Couric interview at the urging of McCain aides.
This is quite a long quote, but the whole thing is quite fascinating. What’s more fascinating is the fact that it appears that whatever she says is simply going to be reported as if it’s fact, once again, even though she’s a demonstrated inveterate liar. Why is our press so damned reluctant to do their job. It is not the job of the press to simply act as a mouthpiece for any political hack that comes down the pipes. They are supposed to keep these people honest. Palin absolutely has to be scrutinized regarding EVERY claim she makes, because so few of them turn out to be true. What the hell are journalism schools teaching these days?
Is it that nobody is supposed to be mean to poor delicate (once pitbull) Sarah? Please.
Secrets: Palin ‘One Step’ From Stealing — video.newsweek.com
This is Katie Connolly, who was embedded with the McCain-Palin fiasco as it actually unfolded. She says that “staffers” hinted about what was going down, and that it turned out to be much worse than had been stated with Palin putting purchases on the credit cards of lower level staffers. Now, in the book “Sarah from Alaska,” a source puts a slightly different spin on things:
The wardrobe malfunction: The dish on the $150,000 Palin family wardrobe isn’t particularly satisfying. Campaign aide Nicolle Wallace was charged with getting the clothes. Lisa Kline, the New York stylist hired to help, “felt there was an understanding that excessive cost was not a concern.” And Palin “was one of the few people in the room who expressed concern over the exorbitant expense of some of the clothes.”
So, what is the story, here? As we’ve mentioned in the past, Sarah’s own account of how she did no shopping herself, doesn’t have the ring of truth to it. To believe what Sarah has said we also have to be able to picture campaign staff running about buying underwear for the candidate and her family, for instance.
CNN’s Political Ticker has this to say on it:
Before her now famous speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Palin’s handlers began to rip the price tags off items in the candidate’s lavish new wardrobe, paid for by the Republican National Commitee, after Palin expressed concerns about the cost of the clothing. According to the book, a $90 pair of socks was purchased for Palin’s low-maintenance father, Chuck Heath.
We, at Palinoscopy, aren’t sure if these two accounts are contradictory, or simply two different reports, one on opening night and another on closing night. Opening night she’s shocked at how much things cost. By closing night she’s decided she rather likes expensive things and has started ordering as much as possible, figuring she may as well have a new wardrobe for her contributions to the McCain campaign. Over at C4P they’re pretty sure that one account of her surprise on election night at $90 socks translates into automatic exhonoration of their ditz queen. That’s far from clear, however. I know, I know, the reporter from Newsweek just made all that up because the media was automatically against dingy Sarah no matter what she did. Right. No, this is a smoke indicating fire situation. Sarah went clothes-crazy. She had her head turned by the money, power, access to other people’s credit cards and she did some things that came back to haunt her.
One simple fact remains: the Republican party still hasn’t fessed up about what went down with the clothes. Remember this receipt, from way back in the campaign?
Ahh, finally some real Sarah dish. The book actually does contain some new nuggets on dear Sarah, including this final story of how the kids learned of Palin’s cadidacy. (Recall the multiple stories she’s told- “I asked the kids,” “I didn’t blink,”)
–Telling the kids: Palin couldn’t bring herself to tell her children she had accepted McCain’s offer to be his running mate. “The governor decided not to deliver the life-changing news herself. Instead, she asked Steve Schmidt to tell her children that their worlds were about to be turned upside down.” There’s no explanation for why this happened – but Conroy and Walshe do point out that the timeline means the children weren’t asked for their permission, as Palin suggested during the campaign.
Yup. She had someone else tell her family. And how about this little gem:
“On the “Early Show” on CBS, authors Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe said Tuesday there was a “remarkable internal war” at the end of the campaign between Palin and McCain’s teams when the VP candidate was told she could not deliver a concession speech. “Governor Palin tried to create some confusion” so that she would be able to speak, but she ultimately failed. “It really turned into an all-out civil war,” Walshe said. On election night, Palin went back out onstage to take pictures with her family and McCain’s staff was so terrified that she would give a speech after all that they turned out the lights on her.
According to a copy of the book obtained by Huffington Post, when senior McCain aide Carla Eudy heard the news, she immediately called campaign manager Steve Schmidt, who barked, “Take the set down. Unplug it.”
The McCain staff didn’t believe Palin’s claim that she just wanted to take pictures with her family on stage – to one aide, it sounded like a “dubious cover story.”
Even as the stage crew dimmed the lights, Palin and family stood there and waved at the dwindling crowd.
Also out this week is another vast left wing conspiracy screed that pleads “poor Palin was pilloried for not being patrician enough.” This writer has a different perspective, but more on that later.
Call ‘Em Out: Sarah Palin
She’s a liar. She lies constantly and demonstrably. If you believe a word she says you are an idiot. It’s that simple.
