Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin Can’t Possibly Go to Sudan Next Month

This devastated nation is in turmoil and anguish for reasons far too complex for Sarah to understand–or be interested in.

And it’s getting worse day by day, as NY Times reports here.

Admittedly, I don’t give Sarah credit for much empathy or integrity, and not even for having common sense.

But surely, even she will recognize that a money-making, self-aggrandizing, evangelically-sponsored jaunt in July to the most acutely suffering country on earth would be an unforgivable affront to human decency.

I predict, therefore, that even though she has publicly stated she plans to visit Sudan in July, she’ll cancel the trip.

Surely, she can find another way to enrich herself next month.  Even she wouldn’t seek to profit from the blood being shed by the helpless, defenseless and innocent victims of this most horrid of civil wars.

In fact, Sarah, here’s a personal request:  announce that you’re canceling your trip, and don’t give some phony excuse.  Just say, “There’s nothing I can do to help these poor people, and any attention paid to me being in their midst would only distract attention from their misery.”

Increasingly Desperate, Sarah Palin Supporters Pin Hopes on New Movie

As they see even what used to be her base losing interest in Sarah as Queen Esther–and as a presidential candidate–her shrinking hard core of unblinkingly blind zealots is praying out loud that the propaganda film made by one of their own can somehow overcome all that Sarah herself has done over the past two-and-a-half years to make herself irrelevant, laughing all the way to the bank.

The serious neo-cons, such as Kristol, Barnes and Krauthammer, whom she so successfully seduced in 2008, have abandoned her.

To them, she’s become a dirty joke they wish they hadn’t told.

Most of the Tea Partiers have given up on her, too, transferring their affections to Bachmann, while dreaming of Perry.

This leaves Sarah increasingly isolated, no more a “Mama Grizzly,” but a polar bear marooned on an inexorably shrinking ice floe (but one, she will assure us, that isn’t melting because of man made global warming.)

God used to open doors for her.  Now she needs a deus ex machina just to keep herself afloat.

The dwindling few who still proudly proclaim themselves as cult members see “The Undefeated” as their last best hope.

See this frantic call to arms–or at least to the box office–at The Daily Caller.

Or listen to the last gasps of the drowning at Conservatives4Palin, such as this and this.

As if a propaganda film could save her now.

For the record, Sarah Palin is not undefeated. She was not only defeated as McCain’s running mate in 2008, but she was defeated in her race for lieutenant governor of Alaksa in 2004.

“The Twice-Defeated” would be a more accurate title.

Not that accuracy has ever mattered to Sarah.

Rosanne Cash tells what a caring, truly pregnant mother would have done in Texas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johnny Cash was and is one of my few heroes.  My admiration for him is based not only on my appreciation of his unique talent as singer, songwriter and performer, but on the courage he showed as a Nashville heavy hitter who stood up for Bob Dylan way back when Bob was considered a commie jew anti-war hippie by the country music establishment, and for Johnny’s overcoming substance abuse problems to create a whole new oeuvre in his later years, and for his being a man who never tried to shove his Christianity down anyone’s throat, and who, throughout his life, opposed needless war, imperialism, racism and insensitivity to the less fortunate among us.

It was my admiration for him that first led me to the marvelous music and equally fine writings of his multi-talented daughter, Rosanne.

In October, 2008, she wrote a brilliant commentary in The Nation, called “Why I’d Be a Better VP than Sarah Palin.

Contained therein is her straight from the shoulder shot about Sarah being pregnant with Trig in Dallas and taking the wild ride to Wasilla:

Finally, there is one subject in which I find I am even more conservative than the Governor, and that is in the area of neo-natal responsibility. The Governor was eight months pregnant and in Texas to give a speech, when her water broke. She reportedly made her speech and then traveled eleven hours, dripping amniotic fluid, bypassing Seattle and Anchorage (major cities with world-class hospitals) to travel to a small hospital in Wasilla that had no neo-natal intensive care unit, and gave birth there. Call me a wimp, call me insecure, but you had better also call me a maverick, because I would have said “Damn the schedule! Damn the speech and the airline ticket!” If this had been me, as soon as my water broke, I’d be at the closest hospital and that baby would have been born in Texas!

This is from a mother of five whose career has taken her to far more places around the world than Sarah’s has.

It’s a question of priorities.

What matters more:  the life and well-being of your Down Syndrome baby, about to be born prematurely, or your image?

The estimable Ms. Cash makes clear the choice she would have made.

Which is the choice any sane and caring woman in that circumstance would have made.  And the choice her husband–if he were caring–would have insisted on!

This leaves us with only two options:

a) Sarah is/was either not sane, or was so uncaring that she was more concerned about her image than about the life she was carrying inside her.

or

b) She wasn’t pregnant.

I just don’t see a third alternative.

 

Bachmann Waves Wand: Suddenly Sarah Palin is Yesterday

 

Sarah is in danger of becoming only the second most disgusting Republican woman who wants to be president.

Bachmann’s performance in New Orleans tonight was pure (if there is any such thing) Palin, from vicious attacks on Obama down to calling male attention to her underwear.

Referring to the recent New Hampshire debate, she said:

I didn’t know if they were going to ask boxers or briefs – a girl never knows.”

It’s reported that she got a standing ovation for that line.  Which figures, given her audience.

If you look at my most recent post, you’ll see I mention that an informed source told me recently that the one thing most likely to draw Sarah into the race would be Bachmann claiming her turf as GOP’s new sexpot loudmouth provocateur.

Memo to Sarah: it’s happenin’, babe. By Labor Day your theme song could be from the Beatles:

Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

We’re not halfway through 2011 yet and already Bachmann is the Sarah Palin of 2012.

Will our gal just sit back and let that happen?

Stay tuned.

A year ago, Sarah’s worst problem was having me for a neighbor—though it was a problem only in her own disordered mind.

Now she’s at risk of sinking into the quicksand pit of obscurity that consumes used up political hucksters who haven’t noticed that they’re no longer tomorrow’s main course at the banquet, but only yesterday’s breakfast.

It happens fast, Sarah.  Just like your arrival from nowhere happened fast.

By next year you could be doing Sunday morning infomercials for “Sarah Palin Scottsdale SPF 100 Sun Block.”

I wonder if she’s placed an advance order for THE ROGUE.

Probably she’s hoping for a free copy.

It won’t come from me.

Even the version shown to magazines this week for possible first serial excerpt in advance of Sept. 20 publication was redacted.

Just like the Palin emails.

There are revelations in the book that Random House/Crown just won’t risk having leaked prematurely.

Let me put it this way:  if Sarah doesn’t announce her 2012 decision before Sept. 20 when THE ROGUE is published, I predict she won’t run.

And I know why.


Sarah’s Decision Coming Soon? Not likely.

 

 

The NYTimes summarizes todays non-story here.

In short, The American Spectator wrote that Sarah would announce her decision within a week or so.

Sarah promptly tweeted thusly:

Really? Hmm, guess they forgot to inform me what I’m ‘expected to do’ next wk…”

The latest I’ve heard from sources I consider both reliable and informed is that Sarah will drag out whatever suspense there is as long as possible.

She’ll go to Sudan, possibly to Israel in August for a Glenn Beck rally, and do two more legs of her bus tour, all the while delaying her announcement.

Unless of course she gets into a bad mood and cancels any or all of the above.  (Her history of extreme mood swings is something I pay considerable attention to in THE ROGUE.)

In the end, my best sources tell me, she won’t run.  All the skeletons in her many closets  are begging her not to, and she’ll listen to them.

She’s afraid.  She’s just plain scared of what might happen if mainstream media finally decides that the honeymoon is over and starts to dig.  If she runs, they will, this time.  If she doesn’t, why bother?

She also lacks the organizational ability to build the complex structure that a presidential campaign would require,  and she doesn’t trust anyone enough to let a professional take over.   Remember, in 2008, McCain just plugged her into an operation that was already in high gear, and even that didn’t work out.

Also, she’s not really committed to any cause except herself.

HOWEVER…I was told a month ago that the one factor that could change all the above would be the sudden emergence of Michelle Bachmann as the “new” Sarah Palin.  Sarah’s ego would not allow her to stay on the sidelines and watch Bachmann take the center stage that Sarah feels belongs to her.

And that’s exactly what’s happened in the past few weeks.  Bachmann is this month’s media darling.  If that lasts through Labor Day, Sarah might have to take the plunge.

I’ve always thought she would run.  I still think so.  But people who know more than I do tell me she won’t.

Bottom line for now:  expect the tease to continue until Sarah has sucked the last egg out of the golden goose.

Trig? New evidence from Sarah Palin emails//UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan reacts


 

 

 

I’ve declared myself as “trignostic,” meaning I am skeptical about Sarah’s story of her pregnancy with Trig and his birth, but I am not yet certain that it could not be true.

If it’s a hoax, it would be the worst ever perpetrated on the American electorate by a candidate for national office.

That’s a lot to swallow, which is why MSM has simply turned its collective head.

I’m still not convinced (i.e. persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt), but recent close readings of the newly-released Palin emails by Jesse Griffin at Immoral Minority and Andrew Sullivan at Daily Dish bring me closer to concluding that Sarah’s tale is an absolute and utter fraud and that Trig, in fact, was not her baby.

To me, the questions have always been valid, and the MSM dismissal of Sullivan as a misogynist freak with a tinfoil beard has been shameful.

The question of whether or not Trig was really Sarah’s baby was much on my mind last spring and summer in Alaska. Both Levi’s sister, who was photographed holding him soon after birth, and Levi’s mother assured me that conspiracy theories about Trig were absurd: Sarah gave birth to him, just as she said.

I devote a full chapter of THE ROGUE to this question, and have material in other chapters that relates directly to it.

My research did not uncover proof that Sarah was lying, but I returned from Alaska last fall more skeptical about the official version of events than I’d been when I got there.

In regard to this question, I recall the words of a US Army CID detective who on April 6, 1970 questioned Jeffrey MacDonald about his account of the murders of his wife and two daughters: “Anything is possible, but some things are more possible than others.”

I now think in regard to Trig that anything is possible, but that it’s more possible than not that Sarah’s whole story is a lie.

Even so heavily redacted, the Palin emails offer startling new evidence. By evidence, I mean facts that could be submitted to a jury in a court of law.   For a long time, there have been photos online–both of Trig’s ear and Sarah’s belly–from the spring of 2008 that would seem to contradict her version of events.  But much of what a photograph demonstrates, in a forensic sense, is in the eye of the beholder. If you already believe Sarah’s story to be a lie, the photos prove it.  If you don’t, they’re just pictures, taken from different angles by different people at different times.

The emails, however, are in Sarah’s own words.

As I point out in THE ROGUE , for someone who wrote in her memoir that “desperation…overwhelmed me” when she realized her amniotic fluid sac had ruptured in Dallas at 4 a.m. on April 17, 2008, Sarah was strangely indifferent to her baby’s fate. I describe how close she was to so many Dallas hospitals with neo-natal intensive care units, yet she felt no need to go to one, even though her baby wasn’t due for another month, and even though she already knew that his Down Syndrome and her age made the birth high risk.

Hell, Sarah didn’t even want to call her doctor!

I go into the hours that followed in great detail, pointing out that observations by others of her behavior every step of the way from Dallas to Wasilla cast doubt upon her version of events.

What’s new in the emails is proof that seven hours after being overwhelmed by desperation about the fate of her new gift from her Heavenly Father, Sarah was firing off BlackBerry messages, including one about Andrew Halcro, one of her opponents in the gubernatorial race of 2006, who’d started a blog often critical of her.

“What a goof he is…truly annoying,” she wrote in the throes of her desperation about Trig’s fate. She added, “I’m headed home from Dallas.”

We’ve all heard about compartmentalizing, but, hey, let’s get real: her great gift from her Heavenly Father is at risk of dying before he’s even born and Sarah is bitching about Andrew Halcro?

Despite being overwhelmed by desperation, Sarah also fired off a note to an aide that morning, instructing her not to proceed with a fake letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News–one that was to be sent as if it came from Sarah–responding to criticism from a couple of Anchorage radio personalities.

“Don’t submit at this time as there will be more thought put into this…” she wrote.

In THE ROGUE I wonder about how Sarah spent the hours between the onset of desperation at four a.m. and her luncheon speech. Now we know: she was on her BlackBerry, dealing with inconsequential matters, as her amniotic fluid continued to leak, putting her baby, hour by hour, at increasing risk.

IF there was a baby in her womb at the time.

Jesse Griffin’s close reading of Sarah’s letter to family and friends, written as if it were from God, provides the strongest evidence I’ve yet seen that Sarah was not pregnant in 2008 and did not give birth to Trig.

In the popular idiom, “God is in the details.” Here, God is in the redactions.

I read Going Rogue (don’t get me started.)   In it, Sarah says she wrote a letter about Trig “to our family and closest friends.” Being Sarah, she opted to write it as if it had come from “Trig’s Creator, the same Creator in whom I had put my trust more than thirty years before.” She signed it, “Love, Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”

First, how crazy is that? You write a letter to family and closest friends announcing the arrival of a new baby as if you were God?

I’ve read saner communiques from Son of Sam and Charles Manson.

But…what’s relevant here is what Sarah redacted from the letter as published in Going Rogue.

There was sheer nuttiness, such as this paragraph, which was redacted:

(But tell me, what do you earthlings consider “perfect” or even “normal” anyway? Have you peeked down any grocery store isle, or school hallway, or into your office lunchroom lately? Or considered the odd celebrities you consider “perfect” on t.v.? Have you noticed I make ’em all shapes and sizes? Believe me, there is no “perfect”!)

“You earthlings?” What is this, Star Trek?

But then there was the money quote:

“I let Trig’s mom have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy, so she could enjoy every minute of it, and I even seemed to rush it along so she could wait until near the end to surprise you with the news…”

There’s more sentimental tripe about Piper not waiting too long for a Christmas present and Palins having four-day birthday parties (“You all really like cake”),  which goes to show that the heavenly father really needs an earthling editor, but the bottom line is what Jesse Griffin spotted.

Jesse writes:

I believe we’ve now seen an email that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sarah Palin’s pregnancy was not as reported.

On Monday, April 7th, Sarah Palin sent this letter from her official government account to her yahoo accounts. It was the draft of the letter she eventually sent to friends and family after Trig was “born” on April 18th, eleven days later.

This letter was written when Sarah Palin was supposedly thirty-four weeks pregnant. Six weeks away from her announced delivery date of May 18th.

How can you possibly explain her writing a letter which thanks God for giving her an exceptionally easy pregnancy (“Then, I let Trig’s mom have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy so she could enjoy every minute of it,”) when she should have been six LONG weeks away from the end? Still facing the weeks that any woman will tell you are going to be the most uncomfortable…

How could Sarah know for sure that her birth would be easy and free of complications or that her baby would be, except for the Down Syndrome, healthy?…

And what about this sentence? “and I even seemed to rush it along…” I believe this is a clear reference to the fact that Trig came early. But how could Sarah possibly have known, on April 7th, that that was going to happen?…

Here is my question:  if she could write on April 7th that her Heavenly Father let her “have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy,” and she knew in advance she’d give birth so easily–although a month prematurely–that she wouldn’t even have to take a day off from work, how come “desperation…overwhelmed” her in Dallas ten days later?

Sarah: forget about “The British are coming!”   What should worry you is “The questions are coming!”

Ever thicker and faster.

And by the way, where is Trig?  Long time no see.

UPDATE:

See “A Trignostic Wavers” from Andrew Sullivan at Daily Dish today.

Palin Suckup Has Hurt Feelings, Whines

It’s not going well when even those with the brownest noses turn away from you.

Some poor chap who says he once “would once have taken a bullet for Sarah” now doesn’t like her any more.

Why?

Because she stopped paying attention to him.

Spurned lover John Ziegler tells his story of betrayal, at considerable length (for an online only piece), at The Daily Caller.

My reservoir of sympathy would have to be nearly drained before I’d feel bad for a right-wing huckster who took the bait only to find that there was a hook inside.

But Ziegler’s defection is just one more indicator that Sarah’s narcissism is so pathological that she can’t even be bothered to keep her acolytes on their knees.

She has the intellectual engagement of a bored seventh-grader, the attention span of a five-year old, and the impulse control of a toddler suffering from the terrible twos.

And now even those so pathetic as to have thought she brought meaning to their lives (aka Rebecca Mansour) are turning away from her.

Mainstream media is/are always a step behind because it/they are afraid to risk being a step ahead, so their people are still poring over meaningless emails, but Ziegler’s cri de coeur is like the canary in the coal mine: a warning to Palinists to get out now, while you still can, otherwise risk being found in the rubble.

Palin Emails – Redactions = Zero

 

What a waste of media resources, and how predictable to anyone who paid attention to the fact that while almost 25,000 emails from Sarah Palin’s tenure as Alaska governor–but stopping before Election Day, 2008–would be made available for public consumption, almost 2,500 additional pages would be withheld.

And who decided what to withhold?  The state of Alaska.

And who is governor of Alaska today?  Palin’s fellow-evangelical Christian lapdog, Sean Parnell, who became governor only because Sarah quit in July, 2009.

Just the list of withheld emails was 189 pages long.

As conservative Paul Jenkins explained in the Anchorage Daily News last week:

It turns out state lawyers and folks in the governor’s office — where some, it turns out, worked for Palin but now work for Gov. Sean Parnell, who was Palin’s lieutenant governor — made the calls on those 2,415 emails. Not an impartial panel of citizens and lawyers, or folks lacking direct or indirect ties to the authors of the emails or any court. Just insiders.

Does anyone detect a smell of fish?

Notwithstanding that the state announced in advance that more than ten percent of the emails would not be disclosed, MSM–even including The Guardian, from England, descended on Juneau in a state of mindlessness that can only be likened to mass hysteria.

As readers of this blog will know, I don’t have much truck with Greta Van Susteren, but her description of this as a “colonoscopy” was apt.

Sarah can only be relieved by the result: no malignancy found.

Of course, in a colonoscopy, the patient doesn’t get to hide ten percent of the area under examination.

To me, the most disturbing aspect of this whole overblown farce is that those assiduous protectors of Palin’s privacy, who redacted ten percent of the emails, did not bother to cross out personal contact information for anyone who’d emailed the governor’s office with criticism of Sarah.  As first reported by PoliticusUSA,  Alaskan citizens who exercised their right of free speech now find their email addresses, telephone numbers, and home addresses made available to the same sort of vigilantes who came after me last summer for merely moving in next door to her.

Let us hope that no harm–even in the form of threat or harassment–comes to anyone whose privacy has been invaded by Palin loyalists who retain government positions in the Parnell administration, and who were responsible for setting critics up as targets.

Will MSM call Parnell to account for this lapse?

Don’t hold your breath.

Now that they’ve come up empty in their frenzied quest for scandal, representatives of MSM will retreat as quickly and quietly as possible, asking the editors who put them on this cold case, “What were you thinking?”

The answer is, they weren’t thinking. They were hoping for a quick hit, a tabloid headline that could parlay the public’s ongoing obsession with all things Palin into website hits that equal advertising dollars.

It used to be only the supermarket tabloids that operated in such a fashion.

Now we witness the singularly unedifying spectacle of The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Daily Beast, MSNBC, and even the Guardian hanging out their tongues in the hope that a tasty crumb might fall from Sarah’s table.

Sorry, folks. Move along, nothing to see here except a governor who was sensitive to criticism and worried about her public image as (see CNN) “she pushed to get landmark oil and gas legislation through the statehouse; [while] demanding that Exxon finish paying damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.”

There could be no stronger validation for the point of view (which, by the way, I don’t agree with) expressed by Joshua Green in the current issue of The Atlantic that Sarah was a strong and progressive governor before being blinded by the national limelight and running off the tracks.

The emails bolster Green’s argument in “The Tragedy of Sarah Palin” that:

“As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics.”

Or, as Molly Ball writes in Politico:

The emails from her governorship, released Friday, brought back the memory of a long-lost Palin: the popular, charismatic, competent woman of the people.

That’s like going in for a colonoscopy and being told that not only is your colon fine but you’ve got no cavities.

Nor could there be better advance advertising for Steve Bannon’s upcoming cinematic hagiography, “The Undefeated,” which will receive national release on July 15.

Note to MSM: Be careful what you wish for. Especially if it’s going to be redacted.

Last Chapter suggestion contest: The winner is…

Tewise, for reminding me of how much damage Sarah has done to professional women with her antics.  She wrote, in part:

I hope you have included how one woman single handedly set back what women have been able to accomplish in history… She has highhandedly tried to stop our voices about what concerns our own bodies and how we are treated. She claims to not be intimidated by the things said about her because she is tough, I call bullshit. The first thing she does is hollar about them picking on her because she is a woman…In my opinion she has hurt our progress more than any other female I can think of. I made a career in Law Enforcement, actually I was the second female Lieutenant in the department. I put up with so much crap trying to prove myself and prove to the establishment that women can make good officers. That we can make sound decisions, remain professional and keep our composure. Then some fly by night so called woman trashes it, tears it up and exhibits everything that every career woman has tried to dispel.

My blue ribbon panel of judges also selected for honorable mention:

Ivyfree

mxm

dmoreno

Reality Check

Thanks to all who participated.  The flood of thoughtful suggestions proved extremely useful as I wrote the last chapter.

It’s all done now.  The book is finished.  The Crown Publishing publicity department is developing an exciting strategy for publication in the fall.  I’ll, of course, keep everyone informed.

 

Whatever is or isn’t in them, Palin emails will be BIG NEWS because MSM says so. UPDATE//Yo, these aren’t the Pentagon Papers!

 

There hasn’t been such a mass mobilization of mainstream media resources in anticipation of a single event since President Obama’s inauguration.

And The New York Times and Washington Post want readers to help sort through the whole mess.

It’s like a contest where the winners get to work for big, rich media organizations for no money.

You, too, can be an unpaid intern for a day or two or three.

I have no idea what they’ll find, nor how much redaction there will be in the 24,000 pages, but I am certain that the nearly 2,400 pages that are being withheld by the state of Alaska would make for far more entertaining reading.

In any event, plenty of media fodder to fill a slow weekend in June.

UPDATE:


 

 

 

 

 

 

How over the top is this media frenzy about emails from the administration of a half-term governor of a state with three electoral votes who was a defeated candidate for vice president and who has not held any elective office for almost two years?

It’s mass media hysteria.  I’ve seen nothing like it in regard to government documents since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers forty years ago.

And as The New York Times wrote at the time, the Pentagon Papers “demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance”: the Vietnam war.

Here’s the irony: the very same mainstream media whose paid pundits tell us over and over again how inconsequential Sarah Palin has become are treating the release of Palin administration emails as an event of transcendent national interest and significance.

The New York Times and Washington Post (see above) are asking members of the public to work without pay to help them sort through the emails, looking for nuggets of gold amid the dross.

MSNBC, Mother Jones and ProPublica have together hired technological experts to help them create a full database of the emails asap.

The ghost of Paul Revere set out on a midnight ride tonight to warn, “The emails are coming!  The emails are coming!”

My question:  given that almost everyone has agreed that Palin has become as irrelevant to our national discourse as a third tit on a mule, why–especially in this age of journalistic decimation–are so many major MSM outlets pouring so many resources down a dry hole?

The New York Times and Washington Post putting out help-wanted ads in order to attract volunteer labor to work on this story of transcendent national interest and significance?

Think about that for a moment:  those twin pillars of MSM have never tried to shanghai crews of amateurs in advance to help them with any other story.  But for the Palin emails it’s all hands to the pump.

Why?

All the experts tell us Sarah will not run for president next year.

If she doesn’t, her political career ended on July 3, 2009, when she resigned as governor of Alaska.

Yet the political chattering class can chatter about little else but Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.  They remain obsessed.

As I write in THE ROGUE:

Sarah Palin practices politics as lap dance, and we’re the suckers who pay the price.  Members of our jaded national press corps eagerly stuff hundred dollar bills into her g-string, even as they wink at one another to show that they don’t take her seriously.

 

Anybody who thinks I exaggerate need only witness the spectacle about to unfold over the weekend.