“Much of the mainstream media is already becoming so irrelevant because there is not balance,” she told CBN’s David Brody. “There is not truth coming out of mainstream media. And I know that first hand. I live with it every day.”
So do we, Sarah Palin, so do we. The truth about you is not coming out of the mainstream media, that's correct.
“I want to help them,” she added. “I have a journalism degree. That is what I studied.”
Did they teach you to write phony letters to newspapers to boost your own image and manipulate the discussions? Is that how the truth comes out?
Sarah Palin is fond of saying how much she knows about journalism: "I studied journalism - who, what, where, when, and why -- of reporting."
Here she tells Hannity about it:
Dear Sarah, you certainly stuck to the five Ws in your extensive journalistic career: Reading scores full of truth from a teleprompter. As a matter of fact, the only thing you know about journalism are those five Ws. You didn't need a college degree to learn about them...
It's hard to stay awake watching this video:
If you're such an accomplished journalist, why do you need ghostwriters to write your books and Facebook notes?
Sarah has mixed opinions about Twitter:
“I’m so thankful for the 140 characters, I’m going to use every single one of them. If you go back and you look at my tweets for the most part, it's 140 characters on the nose. I want that space. I want to get that thought across. But really it's ridiculous.
We’ve been griping about it for years in the world of media, that a politician, any person cannot get a real idea across in a ten second soundbite. Why do you think we can get anything across in 140 characters? A lot of times, our tweets just create more confusion and more problems than they provide solutions.”
Which is which, Sarah? Are tweets something to be thankful for, 140 characters on the nose, or are they ridiculous, create more confusion and cause problems?
The Quitter feed is very interesting (H/T to Brian for "Quitter feed"):
Great stuff! Right on the nose. New words come so easily to Sarah Palin...
Oops! The next tweet was still incorrect...
Yes, I see why they're confusing.
Sarah, your command of the English language is startling. Your degree in journalism has been immensely useful: It has helped to you articulate clear thoughts and to use words appropriately (when they exist). Here are a couple of examples:
State of the Union
VAN SUSTEREN: And Governor Palin, in terms of the speech, do you think he managed to reach across the aisle, even though you used the word "lecture," are any Republicans persuaded, let's try to work together?
PALIN: Not necessarily Greta, because the remembrance here has got to be that he and the Democrats, they've been in charge of Washington this last year. So the common sense reforms that he is looking to Republicans to join him on, he could have implemented many of those "common sense," as he calls them, reforms all along. Nothing has stopped him from doing that.
Healthcare
"I tell ya, this is why people are disenchanted and becoming more and more disengaged really from what their government is doing because when we see an issue like this, words spoken that may not be true, coming from our president, and embarrassing our Supreme Court and not respecting the separation of powers... Since August more Americans have paid more attention to the (health care) bill and more Americans are becoming more concerned. It hadn’t been a matter of he not being able to explain his policy with government take over and mandation of health care, but Americans understanding what is in there not liking it."
I'm sure the media will be eternally grateful for your help, Sarah Palin.
The comments on the post "Sarah Palin Strikes Again," published yesterday, made me reflect on why I still write about her. I don't think she's going to run for the presidency, she's not a viable candidate.
But Sarah Palin is dangerous. She may be an idiot, prone to word salad, bad sartorial choices and a questionable taste in hairstyles, all the things that make her an object of ridicule around the world. She's not dangerous on her own, the danger comes from the fact that she has strong allies in the media.
What? The "lamestream media?" Yes, the very same lamestream media she whines about all the time are her strongest allies.
They gave her a voice when they reported her every tweet, every Facebook note and discussed her TV appearances as if they had come from somebody who had something substantial to say. They not only allowed, but actively inserted her "death panels" into the healthcare reform debate. If they had ignored her and allowed her idiotic pronouncements to fall into a void, she wouldn't be a danger at all. Sarah Palin is a mouthpiece, a poster girl doing somebody else's bidding. She's the "pretty" face of a very ugly movement.
Do the media do it for the ratings, do they do it out of greed? Or are they part of the movement to discredit the president? There are honorouble members of the media who do call her out on her most egregious statements, who ridicule her because they find her ridiculous indeed. But their attempts get mixed with all the rest, with all the reports that don't question her idiocy, that validate her views by presenting them as having substance.
Sarah Palin has poisoned the political dialogue and has shifted the political debate to a very ugly place. The media gave her the power to do so. They have empowered her puppetmasters in the process and that's the real danger.
When Obama was elected, I thought the ugly face of America would become a thing of the past. America had elected a black president in a country where not so long ago black people were sent to the back of the bus.
I don't agree with every decision president Obama makes and I don't consider him to be left wing, not by any stretch of the imagination. But Obama is a compassionate man who believes in society, who believes that government exists to serve the people.
What do Sarah Palin and her bosses believe in? They believe that government should be small, that taxes and services should be cut, that programs to which people have paid into all their working lives are entitlement programs. They believe that healthcare is for the rich, that the insurance companies can play god and determine who lives and who dies, based on money alone. They believe that the mega rich are more worthy of reward than the less well-off hard working people. Taxes are for the poor, the middle class, not for the people who can afford to pay them. The only sacred thing is the military: "We win, they lose."
America leads the world, but it's still a country where the religious right calls the shots, where the rich have more rights than the poor and where there's a misguided belief that America should spread its wings and dictate to other countries how they should conduct themselves. It reminds me of society in the Dark Ages. The poor had to pay their dues to the Church to go to heaven and to the nobility in return for protection against invading hordes from other kingdoms.
It's inconceivable (in this day and age) for a first world country to have a tiny number of "haves" and a vast majority of "have-nots." It's truly unbelievable that in a modern society many people could be left to die or to go without healthcare because it's considered an privilege. It's obscene to have a first world country allowing profit-making insurance companies to play with people's lives, extracting every last cent from a hard working population while denying them the services they paid for at the drop of a hat. It's inhumane to treat the poor as an inconvenient nuisance.
President Obama tried to address this. He tried to take America out of the dark ages and bring the country to more equitable conditions, in line with the rest of the developed world. Here is a man who believes in a civilized, modern society.
The America Sarah Palin would like to see would not be a civilized, modern country. It would be a barbaric society, without compassion, without regard for other human beings, without regard for nature, where the only regard would be for money and power. Countries would be invaded and God would be invoked to give the powerful an aura of righteousness.
The media gave power to her violent rhetoric, to her vitriolic attacks on the president, they gave her words a weight they do not deserve.
I despise certain aspects of America as a country, I despise the cult of money and the religious lunacy, I fear her military might and the tendency to shove "democracy" down the throats of people in other countries, but I've learned to love Americans. That's why I will still write about Sarah Palin and try to counter her poisonous barbs agaisnt those who believe society should be better for all. I will continue to expose her phony political record.
I will also continue to denounce the media that have neglected their duty to investigate Sarah Palin's lies: Her record as well as the faked pregnancy. They have given her too much power and she feels free to derail any attempt at civilized political debate.
life in the twilight zone continues, and down is up, heaven is hell, and did I forget something?
Sarah Palin's "not yet President 2012" campaign continues, and the evil lamestream media shows first signs of falling in love again.
By the way, in case you didn't know yet, I looked into my crystal ball and saw that this will be the cover of Time Magazine after the presidential election in 2012:
It ain't gonna happen, but it surely looks scarier than any horror movie.
Let's take a look at a real cover of Time Magazine instead - the one which will appear next week:
Well, this cover comes pretty close to a parody as well, but when you deal with Sarah Palin, truth and lies, reality and alternate reality just blend in nicely together.
What kind of question is that?
Does she want to be President?
Or just rich and famous?
Well...see...look...whatever.
I mean...can you lend me your ear for a moment, Time Magazine: Is it too much to ask to use google and read for example this article in the New York Times? It takes 10-20 seconds to find it. The PRESIDENCY and becoming very, very RICH does not necessarily exclude one another. Also, I think that the most important person in the world is quite FAMOUS indeed.
The title implies that somebody asked questions and somebody else answered.
Who, why, when, what, how?
An "interview", meaning a "real-life" conversation, often connected with "meeting each other", is so 1980's, as it turns out:
"The following are excerpts from a series of e-mails between TIME's Jay Newton-Small and Sarah Palin as the former Alaska Governor crisscrossed the country for candidates and then for her book tour over the last six weeks."
Oh yeah, Sarah LOVES to write emails. Why not shamelessly exploit this fact, and make a cover story out of it?
Sarah Palin just published a huge pile of ghostwritten turd named "America by Heart", but Time Magazine apparently thinks that they will find something REALLY special in her emails. Which of course isn't the case, predictably.
The author, Jay Newton-Small also went on MSNBC to talk about her article, and admitted that she "interviewed" Sarah Palin via email:
I somehow get the impression that Jay Newton-Small never actually made any research about Sarah Palin. I also get the impression that she apparently believes that Sarah Palin WROTE the big pile of turd called "America by Heart" HERSELF.
In addition, I also get the impression, but please correct me if I am wrong, that Jay Newton-Small doesn't read blogs. OK, I understand that. Bloggers are very creepy people who sometimes type on their computers at home while wearing only underpants. That's sickening. Who wants to deal with such odd individuals.
If Jay Newton-Small actually READ blogs, she would know that one, two or many more ghostwriters wrote this big pile of turd called "America by Heart", but NOT, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, Sarah Palin.
That's because the real Sarah Palin lives in a world of simple sentences and even simpler thoughts.
But the "real" Sarah Palin is hard to discover these days, as Sarah is safely hidden behind a firewall of ghostwriters and highly paid consultants.
This wasn't always the case. With a little bit of research, one can easily find out for example that Sarah Palin's old campaign website for her run for Governor in 2006 has been preserved by the Wayback Machine.
Gov. Murkowski Should Put Cards On the Table in Gas Line Decisions Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Fairbanks - April 23, 2006 Download Editorial in:(MS Word)-or- (Acrobat PDF)
Oil/Gas Deal Should Show 'Maximum Benefit For All Alaskans' Frontiersman Spectrum Wasilla - March 19, 2006 Download Editorial in:(MS Word)-or- (Acrobat PDF)
Palin Candidacy Putting People Before Party Frontiersman Editorial Wasilla - February 19, 2006 Download Editorial in:(MS Word)-or- (Acrobat PDF)
According to final standings, Anchorage dominated last week's boy's state basketball tournament. Sports fans who don't believe in miracles and safely bet against underdogs probably predicted that outcome. Nothing diminishes the big city's victory over the Valley squad, but equal to exciting contests was the significance of another venue drawing countless Mat-Su devotees to support their teams. The sea of Valley school colors at the Sullivan reflected something more than the fan base our schools enjoy.
The optimism and energy in the bleachers help explain why so many are choosing to move here.
Much is reported on the booming Mat-Su and accompanying growing pains. It's ironic that the same commentators can note our breathtaking pace of progress, yet still grossly, wrongly intimate that the Valley isn't a most desirable place to live, based on someone's subjective judgment of a town's aesthetics or income level.
It's generally reported that economics are the sole criterion families use when choosing to move here.
But attend Mat-Su events, you'll get a glimpse of who we are and why people are coming.
Some find unfamiliarity in external changes disconcerting, so come inside the gym where along with the new remains the unchanging and comforting sight of our revered "old timers", rooting their favorite Hawks, Knights, Moose, Warriors, et al. It seems they've been there forever. We honor them for building the community. They represent all that is right with the Valley. These respected activists are joined by welcomed newcomers who quickly get plugged in and connected via energies put towards our youths' activities.
Plato said you can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. Same goes for cheering next to someone caught up in the insane intensity our Valley teams bring out in their fans. That's because diverse demographics coalesce with the elation and heartbreak shared on the roller coaster ride called "Competition".
Yes, who hasn't experienced the elation and heartbreak of the roller coaster ride called "Competition" before.
Plugged in and connected via energies, absolutely, I can SO identify with Sarah Palin. I had pretty amazing aesthetics in my town as well, I can tell you.
"Alaska craves leaders who grow stronger when up against the ropes. That's what happens in competition. Champions expose themselves to pressure, ignore fears of defeat and actually relish contests they'll face in the ring where there's no room to shirk from confrontation.
UCLA coach John Wooden reminded his players always to place team welfare above personal desires. He stressed straightforwardness and humility and wasn't impressed with self-claims of competency and qualifications because self-aggrandizement isn't only unimpressive, it's downright annoying. Campaigns: Spare us the same annoyance by welcoming opponents, so results from a trusted selection process can honorably speak for themselves! Then doubts are erased. Victories are earned and legitimized.
I trust that most in the party of Abraham Lincoln have the right agenda for Alaska, but we won't realize GOP-won benefits if Alaskans continue to struggle with questions concerning fairness in the candidate selection process. All the campaign funds in the world won't buy positive results if voters question the integrity of actions that give unearned, unfair advantage to anyone. So instead of fearing contests as dreaded, dangerous affairs, realize the most important thing incumbents and challengers can do to establish themselves and explain their positions is to run inspiring, open campaigns from here on out."
Sure, Sarah Palin would never ever "shirk from confrontation", would she?
No, wait! Actually, Time Magazine just exclusively discovered that Sarah Palin is not controversial at all! Who would have thought! They got the global scoop, congratulations! I guess that all our time and efforts were wasted, and I that we should have better watched some soap operas or some funny home videos on youtube instead of blogging about Sarah Palin all day, because Sarah says so herself, in her emails to Time Magazine:
"I shall continue supporting and working for commonsense conservatives who will run for office and serve Americans for all the right reasons. Media mischaracterizations of my administrative record and what I stand for won't deter. The "reporters" who continue to cite "unnamed GOP insiders" as hard news sources will soon be deemed impotent by the American public as we rise up and say, "The state of journalism today stinks. Let's clean it up and expect some accountability." Shoot, if I read and believed all the lies these guys write about me I wouldn't like me either!
I'm not entirely sure where the intensity of the leftwing vitriol comes from. My positions are not at all controversial. The majority of Americans agree with me across the board on the issues. I think it's a personal thing that probably stems from media demonization of me and mischaracterization of what I stand for."
Well, I am so glad that Time Magazine cleared that up!
But I almost forgot Sarah Palin's most memorable written piece back in the days when she was too poor to employ ghostwriters: Her masterpiece "Who's Your Daddy?"
More often than not when people out here in the real world run into me they don’t say, “Oh, so you’re Alaska’s Oil and Gas Commissioner? Or, “Oh yeah, you ware that mayor.” Nope. They say, “So you’re Mr. Heath’s daughter? Cool! He’s my favorite teacher of all time!” I wouldn’t wish it any other way.
My dad is in Zimbabwe today. He and mom are celebrating their 42nd anniversary trekking through some African jungle. They regularly do things like that. They recently returned from their umpteenth season working on an Aleutian island where they “shoo away” birds from an airstrip so Villagers’ airplanes can land safely. Before that they spent their second season on Palm~, volunteering for The Nature Conservancy “shoeing away” giant rats that have inhabited TNC’s remote, tropical island In between gigs they worked clean up at the site of the World Trade Center rubble.
Their travels arid adventures, always together, never end. But they always make it back by fall so they won’t miss the start up of the school year, ready and rare to go with new found excitement and perspective that they’ve gained from some recent exploration. Anxious to teach about the wonders of nature, especially the nature here in our Great Land.
Sometimes I haven’t a clue, coming from non-political Chuck Heath, why l remain passionate about wanting to change the world through Alaskan politics. But I know without a doubt that my Dad’s love for this state, his Independence, his strong work ethic and right priorities are my foundation and influence for every decision I make. He’s my most loyal supporter. Me, the media-stamped ‘bard core conservative Republican”! He’s also the number one fan of one of his best buddies and hunting partners, Dr. Curt Menard, the well known democrat. See, he’s much too smart and way too nice to base relationships on politics.
A Boston marathoner, Chilkoot Trail hiker, cross-country skier, snowmachine traveler and obsessed angler. A lucky escapee of avalanche and bear scares and close calls in duct taped-together airplanes. He’s done it all and he keeps going back for more.
I’m thankful for all my dad taught me and allowed me to do. I’m glad he dragged my butt out of bed early, early autumn mornings to hunt ducks with him before cross-country running practice. He taught me to bag a caribou, fillet a fish, dig buckets of darns, and find the plumpest blueberries. He wouldn’t put up with my wimpy reasons why I couldn’t thaw frozen fish egg bait in my mouth, like he does, when ice fishing. But he did understand when I looked up at him quizzically once upon his request to “please hold those” while he searched for something to put our freshly butchered moose’s eyeballs in so his students could observe them later that day. He graciously understood, and I didn’t have to hold those ungulate’s warm parts that morning in the alders.
Her conclusion, so refreshingly clear and simple:
So seeing the “thumbs down” on the newspaper editorial scoreboard with the suggestion that my dad may not be the right dad to allow me to progress towards some political position that probably isn’t in the cards for me right now anyway... well, I got to think about just who my dad is today. I thank the ADN for that.
‘Who’s Your Daddy?” In my book he is rich because he continues to share the wealth. I’m proud of him and thankful for his humble, adventuresome spirit and energy and compassion. And especially for his love far Alaska and for teaching others about this Great Land. In fact, the next time my name is in that newspaper, they should go ahead and use my maiden name. Sarah Heath Palin. Because my dad is Mr. Heath, and he’s a teacher.
"The Roadmap would also replace our high and anticompetitive corporate income tax with a business consumption tax of just 8.5%. The overall tax burden would be limited to 19% of GDP (compared to 21% under the deficit commission's proposals). Beyond that, Rep. Ryan proposes fundamental reform of Medicare for those under 55 by turning the current benefit into a voucher with which people can purchase their own care.
On Social Security, as with Medicare, the Roadmap honors our commitments to those who are already receiving benefits by guaranteeing all existing rights to people over the age of 55. Those below that age are offered a choice: They can remain in the traditional government-run system or direct a portion of their payroll taxes to personal accounts, owned by them, managed by the Social Security Administration and guaranteed by the federal government. Under the Roadmap's proposals, they can pass these savings onto their heirs. The current Medicaid system, the majority of which is paid for by the federal government but administered by the states, would be replaced by a block-grant system that would reward economizing states.
Together these reforms help to secure our entitlement programs for the 21st century. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Roadmap would lead to lower deficits and a much lower federal debt. The CBO estimates that under current spending plans, our federal debt would rise to 87% of GDP by 2020, to 223% by 2040, and to 433% by 2060. Under Rep. Ryan's Roadmap, the CBO estimates that debt would rise much more slowly, peaking at 99% in 2040 and then dropping back to 77% by 2060."
Sarah Palin wrote this at her fireplace in Wasilla, she really did, believe me! Is the black man still in the White House? Give her the presidency, goddammit, she's a bloody genius, our saviour, Evita USA USA, Saint Sarah!
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But it's not just Jay Newton-Small who hasn't done her research. Barbara Walters isn't up to the task as well and loves her soft-ball questions. It's a very sad state of affairs:
As terrible as it is: Sarah Palin's media strategy is working. Intelligent people refuse to do their homework and choose to accept the lies and platitudes that Sarah Palin offers them. What can we do about it? Maybe not too much. I don't know whether Barbara Walters will ever realize that the real Sarah Palin is not a nice hockey mom from Wasilla, and that Todd actually is not a very nice person either.
But we have to try. The facts, madam, just the facts. Look at the facts. They are out there, and not difficult to find.
What was the world like before twitter? Future generations will never know.
In any case, Sarah Palin embraces twitter and develops her very own "twitterosophy":
I struggled to find a final sentence, so I will say this: When I close my laptop, Sarah Palin is gone. That's also philosophic, I think. Or maybe just a reaction to circumstances. And I certainly won't buy Time Magazine to be reminded again that this insufferable woman plays with minds and journalists almost on a daily basis, and that she has a good chance to become the Republican nominee, because highly paid journalists refuse to do their homework, and refuse to do their job.
The "Mama Grizzly" currently enjoys broad coverage of her various endeavours, for example her attempts to present herself as an expert hunter. In the constant flood of posts and articles about Sarah Palin, some nuggets don't receive the attention they deserve - as it happened yesterday.
It appears that the victimization instinct is hereditary. When Bristol Palin used her recent national television presence to verbally flip the bird to all her mother's "attackers," she was not only playing the skilled student of her mother's teaching, she was advancing a strategy that has undermined our ability as a society to have serious discussions about truly daunting and complicated national challenges.
Both before and certainly since the midterm elections, Democrats have been wringing their hands over our apparent inability to get "our message" right. I have firsthand experience with the problem. In the spring of 2009, Nancy Pelosi asked me to coordinate our message on health care reform. I was flattered, but after a short time I realized that she was assigning me to mission impossible. Naïve about the futility I was about to find, I dutifully tried to put out some simple guidelines about themes we House Democrats should employ as we developed what at that point was an unformed proposal.
I said we should talk about the need for reform and the cost of doing nothing, and then the benefits of reform for the people who already had coverage. I figured everyone in our caucus could use those themes, because they did not commit anyone to any specific plan.
Needless to say, virtually no one delivered the message. Many members were already freaked out by the public reaction to other major legislative initiatives we had pursued. And since we were internally divided over concepts like the "public option" that dominated media discussion, the "message" got away from us early on, never to be recaptured. I know I am burying the lead, but I experienced an epiphany after only a few months, and it relates to the Palins. As I subsequently told a meeting of our caucus, the problem was not our message; the problem was that no one believed us. In short, it doesn't matter what your message is if people won't listen to (don't believe) you.
The American people don't believe politicians. They don't believe business leaders, or Hollywood celebrities, or athletes or other supposed role models. And they certainly don't believe the news media. We have a dangerous dearth of credibility in the United States these days, and when no one has the confidence of a majority of Americans, there is fertile ground for con artists and demagogues.
Sarah Palin understands this. Every time she refers to the "lamestream media" -- which is virtually every time she speaks publicly -- she is engaged in the only tactic that gives her credibility with any audience: she lowers the bar for her ideas (or more accurately, for her rhetoric). Rush Limbaugh understands it as well. If you destroy the credibility of those people or institutions that could undermine your own, you create an opportunity for your voice, however irresponsible or misleading it may be, to gain traction.
And not incidentally, in today's American society, even a small plurality audience can be a ticket to fame and fortune.
The "lamestream media" strategy would be laughable if it weren't so effective. Just what media are Sarah Palin and others talking about? Is she talking about NBC, ABC and CBS, but not FOX? All are owned by large corporations whose interests are not aligned with Palin's political opponents. Is she talking about the New York Times and the Washington Post, or even the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by her FOX News boss? Of course it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that people who are attracted to Palin and Limbaugh understand that any media disagreeing with them are lame.
When your voice contradicts reality and truth, the only way to create space for it is to discredit reality and truth. Palin, Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others have made an art form of convincing far too many Americans to suspend their disbelief, and they have severely damaged the ability of our country to have serious discussions about serious challenges.
And now, arguably the most serious challenge facing our country is figuring out how to have those discussions.
This commentary is simply brilliant, and I would like to thank Rep. John Yarmuth for speaking up. He really sees right through Sarah Palin and her fellow demagogues. He expresses extremely well why America lives in dangerous times: It's for example increasingly difficult to present "sane and rational" ideas, as substantial parts of the media and possibly also the public seem to be driven by a rather unhealthy fascination with demagogues, who often seem to dominate the discussion. I call it "unhealthy" especially because in many instances there is no clear distinction visible between "politician" and "demagogue." It seems for example that Sarah Palin (and her family...) is now an established part of the American mainstream - and although it sounds painful, it also seems that she is "here to stay." This, however, might change, as 2011 surely will being a number of very unpleasant surprises for the grifter from Alaska. The groundwork has been laid this year, by a number of people - and next year, the decisive battles will be fought.
Watching Palin with a firearm is like watching someone who barely learned to ride a bike 20 years ago get back on a bike today. Suffice to say, for the purposes of this analogy, Palin is no Lance Armstrong.
Back when her ex-brother-in-law Mike Wooten was in trouble for illegally using a hunting permit in the name of Palin's sister, Molly, to shoot a moose, numerous sources close to the family said there was a simple reason Wooten shot Molly's moose for her: The Palin women don't hunt.
Watching Sarah handle firearms, this is easy to believe, but give her credit for getting out there and trying to burnish her Second Amendment credentials. She's talked the talk and having done that, she's womanned up to walk the walk.
Alaskans should commend her for that no matter how envious they might be of her rich-folk hunting style.
Suffice to say, that $42,400 figure for travel for Palin, her father and a friend to go hunting -- plus the entourage she dragged around Alaska with her to film "Sarah Palin's Alaska" -- is probably much less than it cost to conduct the hunt she described as lasting "a couple of days,'' which is a long time to spend in a tent if you're not used to it.
Sarah, who thinks charter aircraft costing $350-per hour and up are like taxicabs in Alaska, obviously prefers to do her hunting Midwest style instead of Alaska-expedition style, which requires days just to get the gear organized. Better to hop in airplane, meet up with an outfitter who has everything set up, hike out onto the tundra, pop a caribou and go home.
Substitute a pickup for an airplane; a comfortable tree stand for the outfitter; and this is pretty much how you hunt whitetail deer in Minnesota and Michigan. Shooting deer in those states can be a cost-effective way to put meat on the table. It's not cost effective in Alaska. Palin's caribou was estimated to cost more than $140 per pound, but that figure is surely low, given that it calculated only the costs of lodging and transportation and assumed she got 300 pounds of meat off the little caribou cow she shot.
No way. After gutting, skiing and butchering, the meat on that animal would be closer to 200 pounds, if that, than 300 pounds, which raises the cost of a few caribou steaks, some caribou roasts, and a lot of hamburger to more than $200 per pound -- if the Palins flew all the meat back to Wasilla.
So it can only be a matter of time until Sarah Palin starts feuding with the Alaska Dispatch as well. Sarah Palin's reality is different, and has always been. She has done things that no "normal" person would do, and then had no hesitation to cover them up and to claim the "opposite" of what actually happened, and exploited her version of events for personal gain.
My opinion is that Sarah Palin is a hurt and disappointed woman. Her big love, Curtis Menard Jr., ultimately rejected her. I don't believe that Palin ever "recovered" from this experience. In order to overcome this great disappointment, something "clicked" in her head which forced her to create an image of herself and her family which has only very little to do with the truth. Future generations of psychologists will have a field day with Sarah Palin, because there is just no way that her secrets will be hidden from the public forever. Today, these secrets apparently seem "too big to believe" for the general public. But this will change, although I have great doubts that Sarah Palin herself will ever be able to escape from "her version of reality."
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Our Palingates Moneyblast still is a huge success, and you have no idea how thankful we are!
The current total is $ 5655,56 (funny number), with an additional $ 700 pledged!
So that means that after the "challenge" of our reader and fellow blogger Ennealogic, $ 1597,06 was donated on Tuesday, plus an additional $ 700 pledged!
Just right now, Ennealogic also donated the $ 500 which she had announced!
We are incredibly grateful to Ennealogic and all our other readers for this overwhelming support, which is essential for us.
The Palingates Moneyblast will end today at midnight! :-)
The dust from the election slowly settles, and it's time to "move on" again, back to our "daily business." However, this headline by UK Guardian shouldn't be missed:
"Without the energy of the Tea Party, we wouldn't be looking at Speaker Boehner," Nicolle Wallace, a senior John McCain aide who has had a number of high-visibility clashes with Palin, told MSNBC television. "Republicans accept we made some tradeoffs."
But maybe not for long. Palin's aggressive intervention in the midterm elections – and the mixed results – has refocused attention on her personal flaws as presidential material.
She may be a heroine to the Tea Party activists, capable of firing up the deeply conservative wing of the party. But she is poison to the broader electorate – in opinion polls, two-thirds still think she is unfit to be president – and she has shown she values ideological purity over electability.
That could present some conflicts further on to Republicans looking to build on their big gains in Congress before the 2012 elections. Palin made it clear yesterday that she is expecting payback, and that Republicans can not take her or the Tea Party activists for granted.
"Flawed presidential material" or not, Sarah Palin is going to run for President. She can! She will! She must!
However, there are some very silly people in the media who haven't understood yet that Palin wants nothing more than the Presidency, that she is simply obsessed with it, and that rational thinking has nothing to do with it at all. Well, they are going to find out soon.
Speaking about the "lamestream" media: On election night, Sarah Palin was interviewed on Fox by Shepard Smith. He asked a very important question: If Palin runs for President, will she "step out of the box" and talk to other media, apart from Fox, a channel which is giving her, as Shepard Smith puts it, a certain degree of "protection from other media outlets?"
Her answer couldn't have been more clear:
"I will not talk to reporters who have an obvious bias or vendetta or are going to turn my words into something that they are not meant to be and take these out of context. I would much rather be able to speak to the people without that lamestream filter that would pervert what it is that I am trying to say. I've lived through it. I don't need it. And, we have a lot of problems in the world of journalism today, much more biased, I believe, much more unethical that it was when I received my communications degree many many decades ago. But back then, Shep, we learned the who? what? where? when? and why? of journalism and we reported the facts and then the viewers and readers made up their own mind. It's not like that anymore."
So, ABC, CBS, NBC, Politico, Washington Post, New York Times and whoever else is out there who is biased and potentially un-American, please don't expect to get any face-time with the Queen. She doesn't want you, she doesn't need you, and like any good "dictator in training", she will stick by her No 1 rule: Control the message.
So how does Sarah plan to deal with the media when she is President? Will she give press conferences? Why am I even asking? Aren't these press conferences just an unproductive waste of time anyway? Who really needs to talk to all these nosy reporters with their silly, meaningless questions, when President Palin can just go on Hannity and explain herself without being hassled by evil gotcha journalists? It's much more time effective as well, isn't it!
Well, if I had so many dirty secrets like Sarah Palin, I wouldn't want to talk to the media either...
Meanwhile, the media slowly starts to realize that Sarah Palin is an extremist. You don't say! OK, snark aside. It's long overdue that the media finally discovers the "real" Sarah Palin - the woman who started her political career while being firmly embedded within the right-wing AIP-fringes in Alaska (also HERE).
But this election season has called that perception into question. Palin's endorsement of Christine O'Donnell in the Delaware Republican Senate primary revealed a preference for a shallow ideological purity above achievement, qualification or electoral success. And on Monday, Palin issued a robocall for Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo in Colorado, one of the most divisive figures in American politics.
Tancredo has made a career of fanning anti-immigrant resentment and lobbing ideological grenades. The people who voted Barack Obama into office, in his view, "can't even spell the word vote or even speak English." America would be better off with a "civics, literacy test" for voting. The National Council of La Raza is "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." Miami is a "Third World country." Pope Benedict's embrace of immigrants is all about "recruiting new members," in an attempt at "faith-based marketing." "The guy sitting in the White House," says Tancredo, is a greater threat to the Constitution than al-Qaeda. "If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don't we just send him back?"
It would be the worst outcome of this Election Day if the conservative wave were to carry Tancredo into office. The replacement of the supremely decent Colorado Governor Bill Ritter with a nativist who mocks the dignity of the presidency and poisons American political discourse would help discredit the decent aims of the Tea Party movement. But Palin calls Tancredo the "right man for the job." Her endorsement raises the question of whether Palin has any standards for her support other than anti-government rhetoric.
Palin recently took to Fox Business Network to call establishment Republicans "sleazy." "Some within the establishment don't like the fact that I won't back down to the good old boys club," she said. This odd mix of Tea Party Jacobinism and feminist grievance has become Palin's operating style. What many Republicans, establishment and otherwise, don't like is this: The leading figure of the Tea Party movement seems increasingly indifferent to Republican fortunes and increasingly tolerant of disturbing extremism.
Extremism? Yup yup, you betcha!
The "lamestream" doesn't need to look further than Sarah Palin's notorious twitter account.
Oh yeah, which real American wouldn't want to "favorite" this tweet!
Pastor James David Manning is a rabid Obama-birther, a vicious hate-monger who is obsessed with labeling Obama "Hitler." He made his rounds in various TV-shows, and fortunately he was also interviewed by Jason Jones from the "Daily Show", which turned out to be the PERFECT venue for him - watch for yourself:
“Jake, I've never purposefully ‘favorited’ any Tweet. I had to go back to my BlackBerry to even see if such a function was possible. I was traveling to Alaska that day...it was an obvious accidental ‘favoriting,’ but no one can mistake that Ann Coulter was obviously being tongue in cheek with that Tweet. Shall I correct this with whichever wonderful media outlet ran with this (an obviously bored reporter...since there must be nothing going on in the world today, like, um, ramifications of a shake up of power in the U.S. House of Representatives?).”
Dear Sarah:
I know you are reading this. Let me explain: "'Favoriting' a tweet" is not function in the Blackberry, ok? It's a function in this little twitter thingy which you love to use every day to spread your wisdom.
You favorited not just one tweet, but six tweets in total, including a fundraising appeal to SarahPAC. To refresh your memory, these were your "favorited tweets" before you deleted all your favorites today (larger screenshot HERE):
Sarah, you don't know how to handle your twitter account, and in fact, you don't know how to handle anything. Please go to your doctor in Wasilla, continue with your treatment and care for your family. Many thanks.
Try to take responsibility for your actions, just try, only once, ok? After all, you want to become the most powerful person in the world, and this person should have a certain idea of what "responsibility" looks like.
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UPDATE 4:
Anderson Cooper was on the case yesterday on CNN and did a good job, but what truly stood out were the statements by his guest, Marc Lamont Hill, who sent out the original tweet and who didn't let Sarah Palin "off the hook." Afterwards there was also an excellent interview with Jim Vandehei, executive editor of Politico.
Watch:
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UPDATE 5: The pitfalls of sarcasm
In the eyes of the Palinbots, Sarah Palin's latest cock-up is of course just another "non-scandal." Surely almost everyone favorited tweets by accident before, right? Doesn't it happen every day?
Well, this was apparently the general line of thinking for Sarah Palin's fan who sent the following tweet to ABC journalist Jake Tapper, who responded promptly:
Haha...LOL...good one, Jake!
But, but....Jake!! Didn't you know that when you use sarcasm or irony, you have to EXPLAIN to Sarah Palin's fans that you just were sarcastic or ironic? Because you see, Jake, in Sarah Palin's world, sarcasm and irony does not exist, because "above average" intelligence is sometimes required to "get" the "joke." Therefore Sarah Palin would immediately ban all expressions of sarcasm or irony for being "too confusing and potentially subversive" if she ever became the Queen of the USA.
