Sarah Palin - The Art of Grifting and Scamming

Sarah Palin must have this fridge magnet...

Con artists have a way of appearing to have something to sell, with crippling expenses to address.

Sarah Palin is a classic example of a person who makes exaggerated claims in order to move her supporters to reach for their wallets.

She claimed to have enormous attorney bills and had a "legal" fund started by her chum Kristan Cole. Another ally promoted appeals for money: Rebecca Mansour and her barbarians on C4P massaged Sarah Palin's record as governor of Alaska, making her look promising but wronged, urging their readers to donate with abandon. Their creative accounting made their webathon, which was for a limited time, look far more successful than it really was. They asked people to disclose past donations and added them to the webathon total...




When the original trust fund was found to be unethical, another one was formed. Sarah Palin, as usual, claimed that nothing illegal or unethical had occurred. Meg Stapleton wrote on Sarah Palin's Facebook page:

"First off, let’s keep in mind that this is about a legal defense fund. According to the Summary of Findings in the decision released today by the Alaska Personnel Board, nothing illegal and nothing unethical occurred because not a penny has been distributed. Governor Palin did nothing wrong. And in fact, everyone is in agreement that Governor Palin acted in good faith."


Sarah Pac works on more or less the same lines. It's a vehicle for Sarah Palin to blow her own trumpet, to show how worthy she is. What better way to show appreciation than sending some nice green notes her way? Again, the accounting for Sarah Pac is very creative and money is "spent" on some elusive consultants, whose offices don't really exist.



Token donations to candidates and some charities make her appear generous and thoughtful.

A scam is a scam, but some people are blind to the mechanisms of fleecing the innocent.

Sarah Palin quit her job to dedicate herself to a greater cause. Now she has a job of sorts and makes a lot of money. She earned enough in the past two years to be able live very comfortably, but taking other people's money must be addictive.


Her followers believe in the illusion of Sarah Palin as a politician, city manager, ethics champion, journalist... They bought the myth. They fail to see the reality behind the veneer, they fail to see how she formed alliances with her unsuspecting victims, just to discard or badmouth them in her book. She's ruthless, singleminded. I expect some of her former allies chose to distance themselves from her when they realized she wasn't what they believed her to be. Some came out of the shadows and exposed a few facts, others stayed in silence, either too frightened or perhaps thankful to have a peaceful life, away from all the ugliness.


The ingredients that make her schemes work are lies, distortion, misrepresentation, a big ego, some victimhood and a good dose of confidence. Some clever PR to disseminate her brilliance, with touches of how she is wronged by others, complete the scenario.

Her targets are naive, they believe she's working for them. Sarah Palin has worked hard since she quit her job. Her schedule is punishing at times, and that makes her even more attractive to her deluded followers. So they continue to open their wallets to help her with her cause and reward her efforts.

Looking from the outside, it seems amazing that people don't have suspicions when a person with a large income keeps begging for more money. The websites that support Sarah Palin celebrate her cleverness, her ability to raise money this way. They love the fact that she's rich and encourage their readers to keep sending her their own hard earned money.

Well, good scammers are cunning, they know how to manipulate people and avoid putting their hands in their own pockets.

Sarah Palin is not the first con artist in the world and won't be the last. But sometimes they're found out and their fall is spectacular. The people they used as stepping stones may feel vindicated, but those who invested their money in the scam will never recover from their disappointment. Some scammers are never found out, but in Sarah Palin's case there's some hope that her day of shame will come.

It's not going to be pretty...

Open thread - Wednesday

Mrsgunka received her Decorah Eagles prize, provided by Sleuth. The original winner, who had estimated the time of the third hatch correctly, asked Sleuth to give the prize to Mrsgunka. Macandcheesewiz was distracted by some real life issues and felt unable to get in touch with Sleuth at the time, so she offered it to Mrsgunka, a great Decorah Eagle enthusiast.

Sleuth produced some really nice notecards from screenshots taken at appropriate moments in what had become compulsive viewing, much like a soap opera. There was drama, many tender moments and some humour provided by our eagle friends. Watching the Decorah eagles has been a fascinating experience, shared by millions of people. We're still watching and the fluffy white eaglets look very different now. I think they look quite funny with their huge feet!

I would like to thank Sleuth for her lovely gesture. The open threads offer readers the opportunity to take a break from the frustrating business of exposing the truth about "you know who" and to contribute their ideas and initiatives. Sleuth did just that, with very satisfying results.

Congratulations to Macandcheesewiz and Mrsgunka. Thank you, Sleuth.

Myth: The Liberal Media Bias

Part 4 of the conversation between Laura Novak and Brad Scharlott has been published.

Prof Scharlott remarked that the ADN has little room for independent journalism, as they receive a considerable amount of money from the state of Alaska as part of their revenue.

Sarah Palin had a "shrine" on the ADN when she was governor. Readers could follow their hot governor as one would a film star, they could send in their own photos with Sarah, it was really neat. Sometime after Sarah quit on Alaska, the shrine became redundant, but it made a comeback after she turned into a national celebrity. The state already contributed to the ADN's revenue when the shrine first appeared, so it was paid for. Now it generates hits and the state is still paying for sympathetic coverage of Sarah Palin. Plus ça change...

The so-called journalists who recovered their memories after three years and are now offering their first hand testimonies of the existence of Sarah Palin's pregnant belly appear to have been made an offer they couldn't refuse, a nudge they couldn't ignore...

Other journalists jumped on the anti-truther bandwagon, including the very liberal Guardian, from the UK. I can't work out what went on there, but the author of the article (a woman) accused Trig truthers of misogyny. This woman didn't look into any of the material offered by the bloggers who have been discussing the story for the past three years, or she would have noticed that the female contingent is very strong. Women were the first to doubt Sarah Palin's account of her pregnancy and labour with Trig. Is she accusing a vast number of women of misogyny?

It seems that the liberal media bias is a myth. They're not biased at all. It's matter of not being independent, of having to take their orders from those who have the power to jeopardize their livelihoods. It's a form of subtle, disguised censorship.

Or perhaps they're just lazy.

There are notable exceptions, of course. All is not lost and the truly independent thinkers will continue to ask awkward questions...

Here are some of these questions, just in case a curious journalist decides to find out what all this fuss is about:

Questions the Media Could (Respectfully) Ask Sarah Palin Sarah Palin's Pregnancy: No More Conspiracy Theories - Just the Facts
A Doctor Finds Sarah Palin's Wild Ride Absurd

[The illustration above used to mean "See no evil, ear no evil, speak no evil." These days, not wishing to see, hear or speak the inconvenient truth seems more appropriate.]

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin takes advantage of the fair and balanced attitude of Fox News to ask a question of her own:



Sarah gets very animated when she talks about president Obama's "secrets!"

Open thread - Tuesday

Several people sent me the same e-mail, a sequel to "Men Can Fix Anything." As there are so many of you, H/Ts all round! Thanks for the laughs.

A Doctor Finds Sarah Palin's Wild Ride Absurd

I heard from my doctor friend. She has no interest in Sarah Palin and had not seen any of these photos before. The conversation was on Facebook. I sent her a first message asking for her medical opinion (admitedly, my friend is not an obstetrician, she's an endocrinologist):


Regina:

"In your medical opinion, how far along in her pregnancy would you estimate this woman is in each of the photos? She's 44 years old, in her 7th pregnancy (4 live births and 2 pregnancies that ended around 12 weeks)?"

Cecilia:

"According to the photos, I have the impression she's not pregnant at all. I can't see any evidence of a pregnant belly and the little there is in the first photo would be perfectly normal for a woman who gave birth four times, even if not pregnant."

I then sent her this photo:


Regina:

"This woman announced her pregnancy between photos (1) and (2), saying she was seven months pregnant. Eighteen days after photo (3), she was photographed again and had a big belly. What do you think?"

In the same message, I gave a brief description of the wild ride:

"35 weeks pregnant: The woman was 4,900 km from her home town, attending a conference. At 4am, she woke up with a strange sensation down in her belly, with contractions that felt different from the usual and was leaking some fluid. She rang her doctor back home and said she wasn't going to change her plans and would go ahead with a speech at 1pm the next afternoon. The doctor said ok.

After the speech, she boarded two planes for four-hour flights , with a two-hour layover in between, then drove another 45 minutes to a small hospital which was not equipped for complicated births.

The woman had tests at 12 weeks and knew the baby had Down syndrome. The doctor induced the birth and the baby was born some time later, five weeks premature.

Three days later, the woman went back to work, taking the baby with her and was filmed with the baby, showing him to the world and her colleagues."

At this stage in our exchange, Cecilia thought I was pulling her leg:

"This story is absurd. If the membranes had ruptured and she was leaking amniotic fluid without going into labour there could be serious consequences for this woman and the baby. If she was having real contractions, considering that it was her fifth baby, she would have delivered in the middle of her speech, if she made it to the conference room at all!"

There have been opinions by doctors and other medical professionals posted on various blogs. None of them bought the story as told by Sarah Palin. Cecilia gave up trying to be serious about it and couldn't be bothered to give answers to specific questions. She thought the whole thing was ridiculous and didn't merit a considered medical opinion.

Not only is Sarah Palin completely different from all other pregnant women, but her doctor seems to be quite unique as well.

People who try to defend Sarah Palin's actions say that each pregnancy is different. I agree, women's experiences vary enormously. Where Sarah Palin and her doctor deviated from the accepted norms (however unique each pregnancy may be) was by having an attitude which counted on certainties, leaving no room for any unexpected developments. They didn't consider any eventualities that didn't fit their plans.

The general consensus, based on statistics, is that labours get shorter with each pregnancy. There are exceptions, of course, but doctors only find out that a patient was an exception after the fact. The expectation is for a short labour in a fifth pregnancy, which was Sarah Palin's case. Neither Sarah nor her doctor could have known that she would fall outside the accepted statistics before the actual labour concluded. Any advice given by her doctor over the telephone would have been guided by her experience, that a fifth labour is faster, unless she had a crystal ball and knew beforehand that her patient was to become an exception.

Sarah Palin herself relied on her previous experiences to justify her actions: None of her four babies had been early. But Trig was 5 weeks early, which proves that not every pregnancy goes according to plan.

I know four women (personally) whose best laid plans went awry. One minute they were not in labour at all and in a very short time they had a baby in their arms.

A former neighbour called a maternity ambulance and gave birth outside her house, in the parked ambulance. I was pregnant with my second son at the time and the commotion in the middle of the night filled me with trepidation about my own fate (My first labour had lasted 20 hours. The second lasted 3, from my first contraction to my son's first cry - thankfully, in a hospital).

Another had her second baby in the car, on the way to the hospital, delivered by her husband. They called their little girl Carina, an anagram of "in a car."


A good friend gave birth to her third baby in the hospital car park. But the most dramatic story was that of another friend, who had no time to call anyone: She gave birth to her daughter on the kitchen floor, 3 weeks early, while her two-year-old little boy was taking a nap.

All these women had other plans, all of them thought they had time. None of them had a strange sensation down their bellies or leaked anything, giving birth 20 hours later. They had no warning signs at all. Sarah Palin had strong signs that labour was imminent - Todd called her doctor in the middle of the night, remember?

But at 4 a.m., a strange sensation low in my belly woke me and I sat up straight in my bed.

It can’t be, I thought. It’s way too early. Moments later, I shook Todd awake.

“Something’s going on.”

Desperation for this baby overwhelmed me.

Please don’t let anything happen to this baby. It occurred to me, once and for all. I’m so in love with this child, please God, protect him!

After all my doubts and fears, I had fallen in love with this precious child. The worst thing in the world would be that I would lose him.

What made her behave the way she did? She was desperate for her baby. So why didn't she get checked by a real life doctor in a hospital 10 minutes away from her hotel? How could she predict, with all certainty, that she wouldn't go into full labour before she reached Mat-Su Regional Medical Center? How could her doctor check whether her cervix had started to dilate over the phone? How could her doctor be so certain that Sarah had time to make her way back to the Valley, when that prediction went agaisnt all the statistics regarding the length of a fitfh labour? She had decades of experience delivering lots of babies...

Labour is not predictable. Doctors and midwives give advice to their pregnant patients not to stray too far from their chosen hospital in the last weeks of their pregnancies. Are they paranoid? Don't they know that labour can "let up" long enough for women to make their way to the hospital, that it's perfectly possible to make a relaxed journey involving two 4-hour flights, a 2-hour layover and a 45 minute journey by car before their patients can be induced at leisure? Don't they know that leaking amniotic fluid and having contractions that feel "different" don't constitute labour? Why are there so many alarmist, irresponsible websites giving women the wrong advice?



We didn't invent Sarah Palin's account of her labour with Trig. Her version of the events is documented in her own voice. She wrote about it in her book. We didn't write the press release saying that she had gone into labour in Texas. We only used logic and common sense and thought things didn't add up.

[I'm posting the Wild Ride again for easy reference. You don't need to listen to it again if it insults your intelligence!]



As my friend Cecilia said, this story is absurd.

Useful links:

Transcript of the Wild Ride
Other considerations about this story