Katie Couric on The Huffington Post

Katie Couric Dancing: Party Pics Of Anchor Letting Loose (PHOTOS)

2009-11-23T13:37:41Z

Photos of Katie Couric reportedly celebrating her September 2006 debut as anchor of the CBS Evening News have made their way onto Facebook, and the pictures show Couric letting loose on the dance floor.

The photos of Couric dancing were said to have come from an album entitled, "Four Martini Mimimum." [sic]

Which move is your favorite? Check them out in the slideshow below.

(via Gawker)

Sarah Palin Refuses Katie Couric Interview

2009-11-23T09:33:20Z

Sources tell Hotline OnCall that Couric's producer sent two requests to Palin's publisher for interviews during the "Going Rogue" book tour, and so far, Couric has been denied.

It's not surprising -- Palin has not agreed to sit down with more than a small handful of mainstream media interviewers -- but the move looks to be part of a larger Palin blackout from CBS News and Entertainment.

Kevin Ross: Does This Black Republican Understand Sarah Palin's Appeal? You Betcha!

2009-11-21T14:14:04Z

This was the post that started it:

"Many of you know I'm a Republican. Before I give you my thoughts, however, I'm curious to know what you guys REALLY think of former Alaska Governor and GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin?"

Who could have imagined that this question would elicit such an avalanche of insightful, hilarious, disturbing, and outrageous comments from many of my African American Facebook friends?

I certainly couldn't. But I completely understand why the controversial political vixen is "Going Rogue"... all the way to the bank.

Having been on Facebook now for almost two years, I have NEVER had 55 comments on anything I posted. The closest was when I asked my over 1,900 friends to use one word to describe me. That garnered about 31 replies. Even cajoling folks to recall how we met only snagged 29 willing participants. Take for example this comment:

"I thinks she's a "back asswards," intellectually "dithering," bobblehead whose absolutely dangerous in her willful and purposeful stupidity and ignorance."

So for the moose-hunting darling of the GOP to have this many folks bag, dis, clown and essentially give no dap to a "Richard Nixon in lipstick" tells me there is something extra special about this MILF of five and grandmother to a boy whose daddy is big on armpit hair.

And Sarah Palin is "all sorts of pissed about it." No, not just about the recent Newsweek cover featuring her looking quite fetching in a sexy jogger number that amply shows off her gams. Those liberal media news outlets are all on her doo-doo list -- particularly that porn collage called Playgirl featuring the suddenly ubiquitous and perennial thorn in her side Levi Johnston.

It's that righteous indignation that Palin has down to a science that have some on the political left and moderates on the right regularly experiencing Schadenfreude whenever the 45-year-old is knocked down a peg.

And yet everyone who gets on board the SS Sarah Smile strikes gold. Katie Couric effortlessly makes Palin look mentally numb and voila, her ratings and reputation for being a stellar journalist suddenly reappear. SNL's Tina Fey portrays a spot-on caricature of presidential candidate John McCain's unusual vice-president choice and walks away with an Emmy.

Oprah invites Palin on her show for a gabfest and reinforces, during November sweeps and the announced ending of her syndicated talker no less, why Winfrey's the queen of daytime. Associated Press reporters must really love her. With 11 reporters assigned to fact-check Palin's HarperCollins tome Going Rogue during the midst of company layoffs, I'm sure few are complaining at AP, particularly when the alternative would be job hunting during a sustained economic downturn.

We won't even talk about the book publishing world that is thanking God-Almighty for delivering a tectonic wonder woman capable of moving 1.6 million books with lightening speed off the shelves to salvage what has otherwise been a disastrous year for many New York literary companies.

Yet despite Sarah Palin's success as a wife, a mother, politician, opinion leader and now author, large numbers of black people just are not feeling her. Another comment echoed the sentiments of many:

Sarah Palin perfectly represents the backwards-thinking types in this country who are, more often than not, uneducated and not exposed to people of different cultures. I dislike her, not because she's a Republican, but because she stirs up so much moronic rhetoric. She does nothing to push forward an intelligent discussion. I am not even a Democrat, I'm an Independent. Although my father and several close friends are Republicans, I have serious doubts about the intelligence of anyone who seriously supports Palin.

While my Facebook compadres pale to Palin's 1 million plus supporters, another person who I attended college with years ago went much deeper:

As I watched the opening ceremony of this year's RNC convention as I do every four years, I was taken aback by her nasty and snarky comments. Her divisive behavior continued on the campaign trail. As a Christian, I was struck by her dishonesty and outright unchristian-like behavior. Sarah Palin is part and parcel of the problem that has created this frenzy in the extreme right wing fringe of the Republican party. This is the same group who is now selling t-shirts using scripture to abdicate the assassination of the President of the United States.

Palin is far from stupid, but certainly media hungry and a political scab willing to cut down anyone to further her own agenda. Another LIAR in the political arena, but too slow to cover her own story.

While I wish to never hear from Sarah Palin again, she will never go away as long as she can draw the lines she gets in conservative states like Michigan. She is divisive to the country and the Republican party as a whole. What a can of worms McCain opened when he selected her. He had several excellent choices to pick as a viable female running mate, and now we will have her hanging around our neck for years.

Me, I totally get why Blacks can't stand her. When you see the overwhelmingly white men and women rabid over the barracuda from Wasilla, quite a few look like a mix of trailer park dwellers, KKK recruiters, and backwoods hillbillies. Progressive African Americans are not letting the "yahoos" back into the mix without a verbal beatdown, and thus the sometimes shrill but no less robotic, Pavlovian response whenever Palin's name is even whispered.

But I also understand why middle America, the hockey moms, NASCAR fans, Ann Coulter and small business owners are sprung. They are among those 4 million viewers that Fox News regularly caters to. Sarah Palin is hands down the most attractive Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan stepped on the scene to die-hard, GOP enthusiasts waiting with open arms. And while people joked about how stupid and how much of a light-weight the B-movie actor was, Reagan knew how to work a camera and television screen.

Also a former governor, Reagan (who had enough sense to finish out his term before making a White House run) was a blue-ribbon superstar in that he was able to raise money and get people to buy into his bigger than life persona, all the while maintaining his common man touch. Possessing charisma and charm the likes of which had not been seen before, Ronald Reagan had the "it" factor, something no other Republican leader has had since he exited stage left.

Until Sarah Palin!

Now do I believe she is qualified to be president? Absolutely not. I had already decided that I was casting my vote for then Senator Barack Obama even before Palin came on the scene. After her debut, I was even more convinced that the my party was going down in flames. Palin was a cynical choice, based on having a limited pedigree that perfectly fit all the necessary boxes: good looking, pro-gun, pro-life, pro-military, driven, and a fresh face that would fire up the base without McCain looking like he was being upstaged.

As for a woman being used to trump the historical significance of an African-American ascending to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue once Hillary Clinton was pummeled in the Democratic primary, well, that goes without saying.

On so many levels, however, Sarah Palin has exemplified the same intangible attributes our current president possesses. There is something special about Barack Hussein Obama. Despite over-promising and under-delivering, Obama has the ability to captivate and mesmerize. He has tapped into the country's change zeitgeist, even if the results are mixed at best.

That in itself is no small feat. It requires a tactical, resilient individual who not only understands her brand, but recognizes that it's more potent than lightning in a bottle. At least during her 15 minutes of fame.

This is why so many people unknowingly embolden Sarah Palin every time they relegate her to being a clueless tool for those who ultimately want Obama to fail and fail miserably.

Yet, these are the same citizens baffled as to why demagogue Rush Limbaugh is more popular than ever, while CNN continues to rearrange the Titanic deck chairs when it comes to their dismal ratings and dwindling influence in the hardball political journalism arena.

Is Palin academically challenged? Duh! And here is where any comparisons to President Obama end. As Oprah was very fond of saying, "He's brilliant!" Palin, well... not so much.

That notwithstanding, do Sarah Palin's other assets more than make up for her lacking of intellectual rigor? Can a audacious gal who's easy on the eyes, carries herself a certain way, has her own message of hope and who demonstrates a tenacious work ethic get over in this country (i.e. get paid and be a potential king maker) without running for president in 2012?

Res ipsa loquitur. That's Latin Sarah, for the fact speaks for itself.

Oprah's Replacement: Who Should Be The Next King/Queen Of Daytime TV? (POLL)

2009-11-20T15:15:44Z

Oprah's announcement that she will give up her syndicated talk show in 2011 after 25 years on the air leaves an enormous hole: who will be the next king or queen of daytime TV?

Below are some of the names that immediately come to mind as potential heirs to Oprah's throne:

Amy Siskind: Why the Palin "Hate Affair" Will Backfire

2009-11-20T11:14:02Z

I've been watching with great interest as of late the amount of hate stories written about Governor Palin. Oh yes, we are a country that loves our drama. And we are certainly a country that can, at times, be accused of going to extremes. But one thing is certain about our Palin Hate Affair -- the biggest winner will be: Sarah Palin.

With Palin's public re-emergence today on Oprah, the media's Palin Hate Affair got fully underway. Sarah is, amongst other things, a cancer of the GOP, dumb, and heck, even fodder for a musical. Newsweek sees nothing wrong with using a picture from Runners World for their cover story. MSNBC is well, being MSNBC, and showing their inner-misogynist so familiar to us from 2008.

And somehow the extremism of the Palin Hate Affair reminds me of another recent political extreme: the media's love affair with candidate and then President Obama. The problem for Obama, as I recently wrote at The Daily Beast, is that all great love affairs come to an end. And quite inadvertently, our media set up Obama for an epic fall from grace. How could Obama possibly live up to the branding image that our media was so willing to propagate? Simply impossible.

There is another side to the Palin Hate Affair that also feels quite familiar -- it's called misogyny. This should also be familiar territory after the way Secretary Clinton was treated in 2008. As Katie Couric noted just after Hillary dropped out: "Senator Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I've ever seen" and undoubtedly this hurt her chances at becoming the Democratic nominee. Sound familiar?

And just like with Hillary, the Palin Hate Affair would not be complete without a gang up by a group of women who consider themselves to be "feminists" (whatever that term connotes these days). These "feminists" are contributors to an "antidote" to Going Rogue called Going Rouge-Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare. If you read the list of women experts contributing here's what you'll find: most of them hated Hillary too. Check the list and Google their writings for 2007 and 2008 and you'll find every excuse possible as to why supporting the DNC's first viable woman candidate for President was not the right thing to do. Who's crying now?

Here's the thing about extremes -- what they lack in longevity they make up for with excitement. Sure our media is having one heck of a time turning Sarah Palin into a modern day Sarah Good; but at some point there will be period of examination and discovery. A mea culpa of having stepped over lines whose consequence will be a judgment of keystrokes. As as Sarah Good's final words to her accuser would predict his demise, so to, will this extreme come to an end. And the unwitting winner of the sympathy vote will be: Sarah Palin.

Joe Peyronnin: A Rogue Review

2009-11-19T20:45:18Z

I couldn't resist reading former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's book, especially after viewing excerpts of her television blitz on Oprah and Barbara Walters. The book is Palin's effort to reintroduce herself to America, as well as to cash-in on her popularity.

I found the first half of the book to be an interesting account of her childhood in Alaska. I could hear her voice as I read about hunting trips, like one where her father bagged a moose and offered his young daughter the animal's still warm eyeballs. Outdoors is a vital source of food and entertainment in the largely rural Alaska. National network television programs were not aired live in Alaska back then, rather they were delayed as much as a week. Palin's father didn't want to know the final football scores until he had seen the tape-delayed game. Palin says she developed a love for books because of her mother, reading Jack London's The Call of The Wild and The Wizard of Oz.

When Todd Palin and his family moved to town during high school, she was immediately attracted to him. At one point he tried to kiss her and she ran away. She was embarrassed when Todd told all his friends about the incident. They talked to each other each night via hand held two-way radios until truckers began interrupting their conversations. Todd worked hard to earn money and landed a position in the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay, several hundred miles from Wasilla.

On August 29, 1988, they decided to elope, recruiting two residents from an old people's home to witness the ceremony. Palin writes that she and Todd could not stand being away from each other anymore. They celebrated at a nearby Wendy's, and later informed their parents. On April 20, 1989, 7 months and 21 days after they suddenly were married, baby Track was born. Track was named after track, as in Palin was on the track team.

The book begins to shift to her life in politics, starting with council member and later mayor of Wasilla. This is when she says she began knocking heads to hold down costs, wipe out corruption and help small businesses. She began developing enemies who would later come back to haunt her in 2008. She failed in a run at lieutenant governor and then later she was elected governor in a surprise result. As governor she says she continued her focus on costs, reform and investing in energy.

Governor Palin devotes much of the rest of the book to telling her side of the 2008 election; it is payback time. She blames McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, adviser Nicole Wallace and her husband, Mark (she says he has a terrible temper), and other staffers for most of her problems. She says Nicolle Wallace pushed the Katie Couric interview because the CBS News anchor suffered from low self-esteem. She blames Couric for "gotcha" questions, asking her views of abortion again and again, and leaving her substantive answers on the cutting room floor. "Couric wasn't interested in substance," she wrote. She accuses Couric and the mainstream media of bias.

Palin blames the controversy over her wardrobe on McCain campaign staffers. She insists they wanted her to dispose of her usual outfits and wear expensive designer label clothes. The campaign supplied hair and makeup that she was ordered to undergo, "I always did my own makeup." Her new makeup and wardrobe team had worked with Katie Couric. Press releases went out in her name that she did not write and did not agree with. For instance, the first press release issued after their daughter Bristol's pregnancy became public. Further, she didn't like the responses the McCain campaign prepared for her to rehearse in advance of her debate appearance.

Palin did not agree with McCain's strategy to suspend his campaign for the crashing economy, "that's a strategy the vice president's team didn't agree with." She attacks the campaign team for micromanaging her campaign and making too many mistakes. It should be noted that Schmidt and Wallace deny Palin's charges and Senator John McCain has come out in support of his former staffers.

What is missing in this book are serious in-depth proposals for dealing with foreign policy, or the complicated economic mess the previous administration got this country in to, or how she will significantly reduce unemployment, or cut trillions from the nation's deficit, or reform health care or reduce hunger in America. Instead, what passes for policy with Palin are the standard conservative talking points -- lower taxes, lower deficits, less government and a strong defense.

Her bitter sniping throughout the book makes her seem more like a diva than a humble everyday small town girl. She comes off as ambitious and self-consumed, more like Paris Hilton than Clara Barton or Pearl S. Buck, both of whom she admired. Yet there is a populist streak in Sarah Palin that many conservatives embrace. After all, going rogue does have its appeal. And, while Palin remains a very polarizing figure, this book does reinforce her image as an important conservative personality. But she is no Ronald Reagan.

It will take a lot more than whining for Sarah Palin to begin winning over the rest of America.

Ian Gurvitz: The Audacity of Dopes

2009-11-18T14:17:32Z

Once upon a time in America there was at least a tangential relationship between fame and talent. Actors could act. Writers could write. Singers could sing. Of course, there were always freaky novelty acts, but they were in the sideshow, not the main arena. But now we live in the world of "reality stars" -- individuals with little discernible talent beyond a hunger for self-promotion so insatiable that they allow cameras into their private lives to document their personal failings, which then gets fobbed off as entertainment to a voyeuristic public. Infamy has become the new fame. Reality shows the venue for aspiring media monsters to strut the stuff they imagine they've got. A place for Gosselins and Kardashians to wallow in their 15 minutes and, once there, claim it as a right of entitlement.

But now, out of the west, or northwest to be precise, has come a relatively new phenomenon: the reality politician - Sarah Palin. A novelty act governor who was plucked from obscurity and placed on the national stage. A campaign gimmick. A Hail Mary pass by a veteran politician so desperate to win he would try to fob off a grinning dumb belle as a Vice Presidential candidate. Someone who proved not just in those few short months, but since, that she would never let her ignorance get in the way of her ambition.

Thankfully, it didn't work. But now ... she's back ... with, well, it's words on paper between two covers so I guess technically one has to describe it as a book. One that it seems should have been titled Profiles in Carnage because apparently her failure to catapult McCain to the White House was everyone else's fault. Steve Schmidt. Nicole Wallace. Tina Fey. The SNL writers. Charlie Gibson. The liberal media. The AP. Apparently, all these people conspired to make her look stupid. It had nothing to do with her justification for her foreign policy experience being that Russian jets flew over her state. A response so inane that if a junior high school student on the debate team offered it up, she'd be laughed out of the auditorium. And the infamous Katie Couric "What do you read" gotcha question? Even your average idiot on the street trying to appear intelligent could've name-dropped the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and no one would have been the wiser. These weren't "gotcha" questions. These were softballs to anyone running for national office. And her answers were not up to par. But she thought they were. And that is frightening.

Ultimately, no one did more damage to Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin. She was handed a national platform on which she could dazzle the country with her brilliance. And she winked, smirked, and crapped all over it. Forget that she's a woman. Forget that she's from a more obscure state. Forget that she's got a voice that sounds like a dolphin with a sinus condition. She could've opened her mouth and demonstrated her intelligence and grasp of issues both domestic and international. And people would have rightfully taken notice and been impressed. And if a question momentarily stumped her, she could have honestly copped to a lack of familiarity with the issue along with the intention to look into it, and people would have forgiven her lack of knowledge and possibly even appreciated some refreshing candor from a politician. Instead, we got cutesy evasions. "I'll check into it and get back to ya." "Hockey mom" jokes, "bridge to nowhere" lies, and "pallin' around with terrorists" inflammatory accusations. "Pallin' around?" This is the appropriate level of discourse for a presidential election?

And what have we been treated to since, when given a chance to comment on policy? Health care? "Death panels!" Economic crisis? "Socialism!" She can commission a dozen ghost-written books and it will never change the simple fact that she is not capable of participating in a substantive discussion on vital issues because that requires having knowledge, thoughts, and ideas. Not just talking points, surface slogans, jingoistic nonsense, and fake, folksy cracker barrel chatter. She's the anti-Susan Boyle. She's physically appealing. But she can't fucking sing.

And, yet, despite her ridiculous campaign performance and subsequent lack of ability to stand up and take responsibility for her own shortcomings, once again we have to endure the interviews, and the endless news reports about the interviews, during her battleground state book tour, along with the Republican cheerleader chant of "underestimate her at your peril." Yes, we know, Mr. Gingrich -- everyone thought Reagan was an idiot, too. But just because she's shrewd doesn't mean she's smart. You can't teach intelligence. And the talking points of the week will eventually sound hollow when there's no legitimate thought behind them. If there were a God who was paying special attention to Sarah ... there isn't ... but if there were, His message to her would be to finish her smirkathon, sell some books, and then take that shit back to Alaska. Bad news for the moose. Good news for the rest of us.

And I would be relieved. Not that Mittens and Huck don't cause me to wake up with 3 a.m. flop sweat, but this woman scares me. She is, as Carl Bernstein so accurately described her, "an ignorant demagogue." But when so many people are out of work, they get desperate. And desperation is the demagogue's fertilizer. So, as much as I miss laughing at Tina Fey's deadly accurate lampooning of her --a performance as satirically brilliant as Dan Aykroyd's Nixon -- I would happily forgo seeing it again to keep Palin off the national and world stage. We have serious problems that need to be solved by serious people. Not politics answer to Kate Gosselin.

William Bradley: The Inevitable Fluke That Is Sarah Palin

2009-11-17T12:06:07Z

Five minutes into yesterday's Oprah extravaganza with Sarah Palin, I messaged Steve Schmidt, John McCain's presidential campaign manager: "So how did you know Bristol was pregnant before it was announced?"

His immediate reply: "I didn't, untrue."

Palin had just said that Schmidt, the evident villain of her new book, Going Rogue, and other top McCain advisors had already known that her teenage daughter was pregnant with an illegitimate child and had marching orders for her even before she was picked as McCain's shock vice presidential nominee.

Ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin provides insight into Russian politics.

Palin continued in a similar vein throughout her ballyhooed Oprah interview, constantly hitting the girrrl power/female victimization tropes of daytime TV, casting herself as an individual struggling against male control. Except, of course, for "God and Todd."

It's all a tissue of nonsense when you think about it, including her silly notion that an interview with the anchor of CBS News was supposed to be "light and fun." Whether Oprah really bought the act or not, she appeared to appreciate it. That is, after all, how it's done.

Which took me back to when I learned that the preposterous Palin had become the possible next vice president of the United States ...

Sarah Palin was a fluke. Had to be. A non-serious and irresponsible fluke. That was what I thought when I saw she was about to be named McCain's running mate on August 29, 2008.

I called Schmidt, McCain's campaign manager who I got to know well when he ran Arnold Schwarzenegger's landslide re-election as governor of California, to vent. Schmidt, a hardball if rather gentlemanly operator, had helped McCain spring back into real contention with Barack Obama, jamming the favorite with a series of effective if irritating tactics. (Remember Obama's brilliant international tour, blunted by the mocking TV ad: "He's the biggest celebrity in the world." That was Schmidt.) Such is politics, especially for the campaign with the weaker hand, so no personal venting was called for.

But Palin? I'd scouted her, which amounted to watching a few hours of video footage of her and reading some articles, and she was clearly a totally unqualified, and very vain, intellectual lightweight. And that was being kind. Compared to Palin, George W. Bush belonged on Mount Rushmore.

Palin pretended yesterday on Oprah to have been surprised that CBS News anchor Katie Couric asked her serious questions.

Palin was also, in retrospect, inevitable. Even though she was not the real first choice of McCain, Schmidt, and the rest of the campaign high command. Perhaps because she was not the real first choice.

Here's why.

Two years ago, McCain was struggling along, his once frontrunning candidacy having imploded due to his moderation on immigration and a few other issues and his discomfort from playing the establishment frontrunner. After McCain's campaign collapsed, I'd had lunch with Schmidt, joking that McCain must do as Chairman Mao advised when he said: "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea."

Schmidt had decided to carry on with what his business partners referred to as his unpaid "hobby," and McCain had decided to do something "Mao-like" or at least a Republican variant. He traveled like a normal person, was very accessible, held free-wheeling town halls in his home away from home New Hampshire and a few other states. Freed from the pressure of being the national frontrunner, he recovered his mojo in a race that was still very winnable for him.

After he won New Hampshire, the far right went crazy, moving heavily into Stop McCain mode. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity inveighed against him at all hours of the day and night. The far right blogosphere was in high dudgeon over this "dangerous liberal" McCain.

The reality is that McCain is a conservative. He's much like Ronald Reagan, who would also face tremendously vicious yip-yap today in the party which purports to venerate him unless he moved further to the right.

The far right settled on the awkward figure of Mitt Romney to stop McCain. For some, like radio host Hugh Hewitt, who wrote a truly amazing biography of Romney (in which the corporate takeover artist flew over tall buildings), it was a matter of heavily willed suspension of disbelief that this Eastern economic royalist/social liberal was really a movement conservative. For others, it was simply a matter of stopping McCain, who once pissed all over their pretensions. Romney had adopted their rhetoric, fraudulent though his positioning was, and for them, that was enough.

With the Republicans' winner-take-all primary ways, and Romney not able to shut down Mike Huckabee, McCain rocked Romney to a dead stop in California and knocked him out the following week in Florida. He did this with the help of moderate Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist, both of whom are reviled by the far right.

But the far right, which amounts to a neo-Confederate political tendency, retained a simmeringly mutinous attitude, playing up sizable non-McCain votes as the primaries went on. Though they couldn't ever get behind Huckabee.

An interesting question is why they didn't get behind Huckabee instead of Romney. Huckabee is a real social conservative and a far better natural politician than the generally stiff Romney. But he's more of a populist than a royalist, and expressed concern about climate change. The dominant far right political tendency deeply identifies with entrenched wealth and authority, and disdains squishy notions like peace and the environment. Which is why Dick Cheney, of all people, is a patron saint of the far right.

So McCain and his advisors had a big problem going forward. The far right, with big megaphones in the form of Limbaugh, Hannity, et al was busily proclaiming that they were the real Republicans. And without the so-called "base," McCain had a built-in potshot press every day.

Palin was baffled by questions about the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Schmidt, who'd tooled around with McCain in rental cars and commercial flights during the rebuilding days of the campaign, had taken over its operations. Working with Schwarzenegger, he'd been at the controls of a smoothly running megabucks machine. But this, even after clinching the nomination, was definitely more ramshackle.

Especially compared with the humming Obama machine, raising money at a record clip, with volunteers all over America. Once the tussle with the Clintons was ended -- despite all the silly "Puma" hype, which never really amounted to much, though Schmidt and others had some hopes -- Obama had a happy and united party base on the left and and in the center.

When it came time to pick a potential vice president, the McCain high command had a series of not especially good choices.

My impression was that they liked Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, both personally and substantively. But he was not an inspiring figure and Obama was likely to win his state, as he did, easily.

Huckabee was a good campaigner and had good rapport with McCain. But you certainly couldn't have a creationist on the ticket. Right? And the Talk Radio Wing of the party hated him.

Palin now bashes the Wall Street bailout as an Obama scheme. Last year, when it was pushed through by George W. Bush, she backed it, but thought that it was about health care.

Romney was, let's say, not personally popular in McCain Land. The two seemed to viscerally dislike each other on stage, making the Obama-Hillary dynamic look like occasionally bickering lab partners. But he could bring some very big money to the table, if no real advantage in terms of states.

McCain wanted to tear it up and be the maverick by picking Joe Lieberman. Al Gore's running mate of 2000 would be his running mate of 2008.

But that wouldn't fly, as Team McCain learned when they took some soundings in the party. As much as much of the left hates Lieberman -- without whom, as Obama shrewdly realized, there would be no 60-vote Democratic majority in the Senate -- he is a dangerous liberal to the far right. Sure, he's a neo-Likudnik hawk. But beyond that he is essentially a moderate corporate liberal Democrat. And that is totally unacceptable to the Taliban of America's far right.

Other folks mentioned, the Rob Portman types, were largely unknown and were in no way game-changers.

For that was how the pick came to be framed.

Palin complains now that her brilliance was bottled up by Team McCain.

Most of what the McCain campaign did in the general election can be understood by understanding this: The presidency of the United States in 2008 was Barack Obama's to lose. That's the way the dynamics of history played out in 2008. If Obama became seen as a plausible president -- and McCain and his top people never bought the "birther" nonsense or the rest of the "Manchurian Candidate" fantasy so prevalent on the far right even today, though they played around with that fire -- and didn't make a big mistake, he would be the next president.

Unless they could alter the equation, distract from Obama's luster, trip him up. And they would need a big turnout of core conservative voters to be in the ballpark.

In that context, essentially a context of desperation -- and let's remember all the handwringing about Obama's chances amongst liberal Democrats going on throughout all this -- Sarah Palin made sense.

Except that she really didn't. Because she had no idea what she was talking about. Which is why I knew she was dead amongst independent voters, who don't necessarily like fancy credentials but demand basic knowledge.

And yet she really did make sense, very much so, politically, within the context of the Republican Party. Both through process of elimination -- see above -- and in terms of activating conservative activists and turning on grassroots conservative contributors.

I thought from the beginning she would backfire, and wrote it again after she gave her big speech at the Republican national convention, which had most pundits swooning. And that proved to be the case.

Palin brought a lot of energy -- mostly of the angry, backlash variety -- to the McCain ticket. But in the end, because of her fundamental ignorance and negativity, she made it impossible for McCain to win.

Now, let me say that I have always liked McCain. I don't agree with him on everything, to say the least, but I think he is a good man in a very flawed system.

I had hoped for a different sort of campaign between my favorite Democrat and my favorite Republican. That was too idealistic of me. For that sort of campaign would have guaranteed an Obama victory. Naturally, McCain decided not to play along, as, like most politicians, he would rather take a shot at winning than settle for an honorable defeat.

That also brought us Sarah Palin.

But what really made Palin the inevitable fluke that she is is the nature of the current Republican Party.

A once great party has turned into a neo-Confederate political party, looking for a very shallow, mean, dishonest, know-nothing version of Ronald Reagan. And in Sarah Palin, it has found it.

America doesn't buy her as a potential president. Especially after she bizarrely quit as governor of small state Alaska halfway through her only term.

But in a multi-candidate winner take all GOP primary scenario, she could definitely walk away with the party's presidential nomination. And in the meantime, her poisonous brand of charisma will continue to infect Republicans, meaning that all of national politics will continue to be infected with a vicious virus of dishonest, know-nothing hyper-partisanship.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Robert J. Elisberg: The Sarah Palin-Carrie Prejean Two-for-One Tour

2009-11-17T10:29:43Z

So, Carrie Prejean was on Oprah yesterday, and when... wait, I'm sorry, it was Sarah Palin. My mistake. I confuse them at times. Beauty pageant winners who left their jobs early and get peevish when you ask something hard they don't want to answer, but claim you're stifling their freedom to speak.

Alas, I didn't watch. I just figured that if she had nothing to say when running to be Vice President of the United States, why in the world would I care when she was simply hawking a book she didn't write?

Indeed, seeing a single quote from the autobiography she didn't write, and just one clip from her TV appearance, that was more than enough emptiness to confirm my decision.

There she was, responding to being asked if the estranged father of her unmarried teenage daughter's baby, who has been relentlessly trashing her publicly and posing nude would be coming to Thanksgiving dinner. "That's a good question!!," she enthused.

No, it's not a good question. Anyone who thinks the answer is anything except, "Not even if Jesus Himself was his chaperone," has eaten too many candied yams. The bigger problem, though, was that she continued, trying to sound patronizing...sorry, "forgiving," by saying he needs to become part of the fold to know that he's loved. Loved??!! That wasn't a "forgiving" answer, it was a creepy one. Sarah Palin hasn't shown a wisp of "love" in a single one of her scathing public press releases about him. Further, to suggest that he should be taken under the "wing" of her "fold" ignores the reality that Mr. Johnston a) has a family where he is, no doubt, actually loved, and b) is the father of her granddaughter, not applying for admittance to the Church of Palin.

When you give a chuckleheaded answer, you come across like a chucklehead.

But then, it's very telling that she thinks this a "good question," yet believes it was a horrible question to ask a Vice Presidential candidate what publications she reads to inform her world view.

You see, what was so ghastly about the excerpts from her book concerning the Katie Couric interview is not that she was offended (still) by the question. It's what she wrote next.

As the AP reports, "...given what she called Couric's lack of knowledge about energy issues, Palin wondered whether she should have asked the news anchor what she read."

Keep in mind that Sarah Palin had a full year to think about this. A year!! And the best she can come up with is that she should have asked the anchor of the "CBS Evening News" what she reads!

Ms. Couric would likely have said something like, "I read the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Rome Il Messaggero" - which not only would have made Ms. Palin look truly foolish...but then she would have continued, "Okay, I just answered your question. Will you now answer mine?"

But even that's not what's most ghastly about her comments. It's something that has been ghastly since the moment the Couric Question was asked. It's that what Sarah Palin should have answered is - "I read the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Rome Il Messaggero." It doesn't matter if she really does read these - she's a politician, the truth is an alien - but it would have ended the matter.

Or she could have said, "My staff puts extracts from newspapers on my desk in the morning. Most politicians don't have time to read daily papers."

But Carrie Prejean just stood...sorry, Sarah Palin stood there like a bobbleheaded deer caught in the headlights and crash-landed. Imagine if Sarah Palin was sitting in the White House and had to answer, say - a serious question. Harder than "What do you read?" It's becoming more clear why she quit the governorship halfway through.

And still, she writes that she was mortified by Couric's supposed lack of knowledge on energy issues. This from someone who's sophisticated position is, "Drill, baby, drill."

But then, lack of knowledge during interviews really isn't something Sarah Palin should ever bring up. As in - not ever.

Because this is the person who claimed she had foreign policy experience because Russia is close to where she lived.

That can never be repeated enough. Sarah Palin was running for Vice President of the United States and claimed she had foreign policy experience because Russia is close to where she lived.

It's not that this is so air-gaspingly stupid - it's that she was caught unprepared on so basic, obvious a question...and thought it was a smart answer. She could have said almost anything half-rational. Instead - unprepared - she gave an answer that a second-grader would give. Though not a third-grader.

When you give a chuckleheaded answer, you come across like a chucklehead.

It is not living in the past to bring this up. Her answer speaks to character. And the ghastly thing is, a year later there's no evidence that today her answer would be any different.

One year. And that's the best that she came up with for her book. That she should have asked the anchor of the "CBS Evening News" what she reads.

One year. And she's still bumfuzzled by having been asked what she reads. That it was too hard, too unfair, too inappropriate. No wonder she dismisses difficult questions asked her as "Gotcha Questions." No wonder she quit being governor after only half a term.

If she can't handle any of this, if she can't handle "What do you read?" - in what universe does anyone think she could handle sitting down with a confrontational Iran to negotiate a nuclear arms agreement??

It came as no surprise, therefore, to hear that Carrie Prejean considers Sarah Palin one of her heroes. When the Emperor of Softball Questions, Larry King, asked her nothing more than what she was thinking ("You don't have to tell me the terms of the settlement, but why settle...?"), she imploded. It was too hard, too unfair, too "inappropriate."

But then, Ms. Prejean has this ongoing problem answering questions that she finds inconvenient, just like her "hero," Sarah Palin. I can't talk about that. I won't talk about that. The media is mean to me. That's inappropriate. Doing endless interviews to yammer that her Free Speech Rights are being blocked.

When you give a chuckleheaded answer, you come across like a chucklehead.

Here's the thing: if Sarah Palin - sorry, if Carrie Prejean doesn't want to answer questions, then stop doing interviews. She reminds me of a sketch by the great comics Bob & Ray, where a guy comes in for an interview and hands the host a list of prepared questions - and at one point berates the host for asking a bad question, from that very list. Carrie Prejean isn't interested in doing interviews; she wants a One Woman Show on Broadway. "Carrie Prejean stars as Carrie Prejean."

SarahPalinCarriePrejean are two peas in a pod. Both preening for the cameras, winking as human contact, and unwilling, unable to answer any question that forces them to process opinions different from their own. Pouting their way petulantly through life.

If Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean want to be bastions of female equality, role models of womanhood, this is not the way to go about it. This is One Giant Leap Backwards for Womankind. Women are so much smarter, better than this.

When you give chuckleheaded answers, you come across like a chucklehead.

And this reaction here, it all came from nothing more than an excerpt in an autobiography she didn't write, and one TV clip. And you wonder why I couldn't bear to make it through the whole interview.

My head would have exploded.

Shannyn Moore: Palin's Oily Lies Drip from the Pages of Going Rogue

2009-11-16T04:27:05Z

I know facts aren't going to matter to many people buying Sarah Palin's, Going Rogue. Facts certainly didn't matter to folks who voted for her.

According to the "fact checkers":

PALIN: Welcomes last year's Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation's largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she'd had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court's ruling went "in favor of the people." Finally, she writes, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.

THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the long-running case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Environmentalists and plaintiffs' lawyers decried the ruling as a slap at the victims and Palin herself said she was "extremely disappointed." She said the justices had gutted a jury decision favoring higher damage awards, the Anchorage Daily News reported. "It's tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision," she said, noting many had died "while waiting for justice."

When Sarah Palin was asked by Katie Couric what Supreme Court decisions other than Roe v. Wade she disagreed with, she couldn't think of one. NOT ONE! Sarah squandered an opportunity, the perfect chance to tell America our story, an Alaskan story: dozens of suicides, thousands sick from clean up, tens of thousands bankrupt from a dead fishery.

Sarah Palin is to Alaska what Velveeta is to cheese; sadly unsatisfying and empty of nutrition. She had the national stage to plead Alaska's case to citizens who had long forgotten the images of a once pristine Prince William Sound turned into a thick, black, rolling sea; the oiled sea otters and birds; unrecognizable seals and whales; an initially deformed and diseased herring run that became extinct -- costing Cordova $100 million a year. Exxon exploited Alaska and turned pain into profit.

AND NOW, Palin is claiming to be part of a victory for the people of Alaska? Reality Deficit Disorder...now in book form.

The Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker Supreme Court decision in June 2008 all but pardoned Exxon's negligence. The highest court in the land condoned the half-assed cleanup. (My radio interview on the day of the ruling with Greg Palast). Exxon, the company that set and broke Planet Earth's quarterly profit record three quarters in a row, was let off the hook. Because of this unprecedented landmark decision, future corporate punitive damages are now forever minimally capped at literally pennies on the dollar!

The Roberts Court based its activist ruling on 19th century maritime law. Really! 21st century corporations can now view punitive damages as the small cost of doing business. Due to Exxon's negligence and the corporate sympathy of the Supreme Court, one the largest acts of environmental terrorism in history was treated like an accidental littering. The RATS -- Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia, (Alito recused himself, confident that Souter and Kennedy would fill the business-friendly void) winked at their corporate masters as the Judas Court betrayed Justice.

Exxon doesn't have marked offices in Alaska. There are some pretty hard feelings even 20 years later for some pretty good reasons. When Palin was pointing fingers at Letterman in July of this year, she did it from Houston, Texas. She was there to sign a deal with Exxon on behalf of Alaska. The state's willingness to do business with Exxon was like having your parents rent the basement to the guy who date raped you on prom night. Am I clear?

So Sarah was against the decision before she couldn't remember it before she was for it. And now, courtesy of Going Rogue, Sarah Palin manages to insult and injure Alaskans who will never be made whole with yet another one of her documented lies.

The jury originally punished Exxon with $5 billion in punitive damages -- a year's profit at the time. In 2008, nearly 20 years later, Exxon reported the largest annual profit in US history at $45.22 billion. The company shattered its own record set the previous year. Would the original $5 billion in punitive damages been punishment enough? The answer is now slowly dripping onto victims at 10 cents on the dollar. Opening your mailbox to an Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Settlement check is like getting a royalty payment for the snuff film your kid brother was in. Hey, you're getting paid, but he's still dead and you got to watch.

(above) Then Governor Palin's appropriate reaction to the Exxon v. Baker decision June, 2008

Candidate Palin's stunning memory lapse of Exxon v. Baker just 3 months later...

Look for Going Rogue in the revisionist history section of your local bookstore on Tuesday...

Geoffrey Dunn: Schmidt Calls Palin's Memoirs "Total Fiction"

2009-11-14T18:12:52Z

To read Sarah Palin's shockingly shallow Going Rogue, one is immediately struck by how nasty and vindictive Palin is and by the fact that her book is little more than a veiled mechanism for settling scores with old foes who have triumphed over Palin throughout her lifetime.

Is Palin really going rogue? Hardly. Getting even is more like it.

Palin's biggest score to settle is with those senior advisers--Republicans all--in the John McCain campaign, on whose shoulders Palin lays the blame for her failed and tortured debut on the American political stage last fall. Most notable among them, of course, is "The Bullet," Steve Schmidt, who took over McCain's teetering campaign in July of 2008 and was a staunch advocate of Palin's selection as McCain's running mate.

He has told the Huffington Post that Palin's allegations against the McCain campaign are "total fiction."

Schmidt now joins a host of former McCain staffers, including Mark Salter and Nicolle Wallace, who have challenged the veracity of Palin's book even before it hits the streets on Tuesday. One McCain aide who worked closely with Palin and who "liked her personally" described Palin's account of the campaign as "blatantly and absolutely inaccurate."

McCain aides are shocked-- though not entirely surprised--by Palin's allegations. They caught enough of her act during the 60-plus days of her campaign sojourn to know that she plays "fast and loose with the truth."

As for Palin labeling Schmidt "cool," "grim-faced" and "rotund," Schmidt, a former high school tight end with a beefy six-foot frame, joked, "Why are they always picking on the bald guy?"

A former Bush operative widely respected in Republican circles for his managerial skills and focused demeanor, Schmidt is precisely the type of disciplined task master that Palin has bristled against all her life. The scattered Palin's biggest complaint about Schmidt: he's "business to the bone."

Heaven forbid.

Palin contends that Schmidt came to her midway through the campaign and confronted her about her consumption of so-called Atkins bars and told her that she needed to "get off that Atkins Diet." In fact, Schmidt and campaign manager Rick Davis had heard concerns from both staffers and the press that Palin was dieting to the point of impacting her performance on the campaign. Palin, according to senior staffers, was concerned about not looking heavy on camera and was thoroughly obsessive about her appearance and every little comment that was made about her looks.

Palin also contends that in the aftermath of her humiliating prank phone call by a comedian posing as French president Nicolas Sarkozy that Schmidt called Palin angrily screaming, "How can anyone be so stupid?!"

According to two McCain sources, one of whom was on the bus with Palin at the time, the phone call never happened. "There was an email," he said, "but never a phone call. This is a pure fabrication."

Palin also contends that Schmidt used profanity in front of her young daughter Piper. Those who have worked closely with Schmidt are most outraged by this particular Palin assertion. "Steve is a great father to his young kids and totally respectful of children," said a long time associate who has worked with Schmidt in "different capacities," including on the McCain campaign. "I never saw it happen. Not once. That charge is 'other worldly'."

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn's book The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power will be released by St. Martin's Press in spring 2010.

Joe Peyronnin: Going Rogue : Gotcha!

2009-11-13T16:14:02Z

Never underestimate how much shear chutzpah, ambition and attractiveness can get a person in this day and age. Try at least $1.2 million.

Take former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin who stands to make a fortune from her personal memoir, Going Rogue. Meanwhile, a lot of media personalities are capitalizing on her box office drawing power for their own benefit. Only in America!

Palin's 413 page memoir was written at break neck speed with ghostwriter Lynn Vincent, who also helped write Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party. HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch, will publish a first run of 1.5 million copies.

The Associated Press bought a copy of the book and has printed some of the book's most controversial content. This led Palin to criticize AP for "erroneously reporting the contents of the book" in a Facebook sales pitch Friday, and to ask her fans to "keep your powder dry, read the book."

In Going Rogue Palin writes about her childhood, her family, Alaska and the 2008 presidential campaign. Palin says she did the interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric as a favor to her because she felt sorry for Couric's low ratings. She was asked to do so by Nicole Wallace, a senior John McCain presidential campaign adviser and former CBS News consultant.

The Couric interview took place over several days and covered a wide range of topics. In her book, Palin describes Couric as condescending, biased and "badgering." And she says CBS News left the most substantive content from the interview on the cutting room floor. Palin says she was taken aback by what she calls Couric's "gothca" questions. For instance, this exchange:

"COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this -- to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I've read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media --

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I'm curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news."

This interview was widely viewed, including by members of the McCain/Palin campaign, as devastating for Palin. Since her selection at the Republican convention her popularity had been soaring. The Couric interview was a critical turning point in the 2008 presidential election.

Friday, CBS News President Sean McManus reacted to Palin's charges, "In this case, I really do think that the quality of the interview and the quality of the questions speak for themselves." He went on, "It's really difficult for me to think that any of the questions were unfair or any of them were questions that a vice presidential candidate shouldn't be expected to receive."

Palin also criticizes ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson for his arrogance and line of questioning. For instance:

"GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend."

Of course, the "Bush doctrine" was well covered by all the newspapers and news magazines for weeks before and after the Iraq war. This wasn't a trick question, nor was the question he asked that led her to observe you can see Russia from Alaska. Nor was the question two weeks later by Couric asking what newspaper's Palin read "to understand the world."

In "Going Rogue" Palin also criticizes the McCain campaign for keeping her bottled up, for making her pay $50,000 in "vetting" expenses, making her wear fancy clothes and mishandling her teen daughter's pregnancy announcement. Particularly noteworthy is that her almost son-in-law, Levi Johnson, is not mentioned in the book.

Now Governor Palin takes her book campaign on the road. Beginning with Grand Rapids, Michigan, she will visit states that any aspiring Republican presidential candidate would target. She has interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Walters and Rush Limbaugh. And then she runs the gauntlet on Fox News (also owned by Rupert Murdoch), Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren.

Remember, no gotcha questions, please!

Andy Ostroy: Katie Couric Should Be Fired!

2009-11-13T10:55:56Z

So, former vice presidential candidate and girl-wonder Sarah Barracuda Palin writes a 413-page memoir, Going Rogue, (due out Tuesday) and sits with mega-media-mogul Oprah Winfrey to dish about the big bad partisan press that treated her unfairly during the 2008 campaign. She took extra special jabs at CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric--who she accuses of being biased, condescending and "badgering"--and ABC newsman Charles Gibson, who she said appeared bored, patronizing and judgemental as he "peered skeptically" at her from his authoritarian nose-dangling reading glasses.

I have to say, I agree with Palin. In fact, I am calling for CBS to fire Katie Couric for her outrageous inappropriate, unprofessional and offensive behavior. Let me remind you of Couric's crime: During the interview, Couric asked MILFY to explain why Alaska's proximity to Russia translates to having foreign policy experience. And then, Couric had the uber-audacity to ask the woman who wanted to be next in line to the Oval Office what newspapers and magazines she reads regularly, and an uncomfortable Palin replied: "Um, all of them, any of them."

I'm sorry, but what part of "seeing Russia from my window" does Couric not get? This is exactly the kind of foreign policy vision America needs. And, to ask Palin what she reads? How dare Couric throw Palin such a hardball question like that, one that truly smacks of some serious liberal-fueled badgering? This is a woman who lobbied to literally be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Leader of the free world. Show some respect, Katie, and ask her to explain the complicated cultural and religious differences between Iraq's Shia, Sunni and Kurdish populations as relating to a solution to the war. Ask her to give an overview of the Arab-Israeli conflict and what her strategy would be for bringing about a lasting peace in that region. Ask her to explain the role played by the insurance, pharmaceutical and medical industries in America's health-care problem. Ask her to explain how credit default swaps, derivatives and other risky financial instruments nearly brought Wall Street to its knees. Now these would be softballs; slam-dunks Palin could've answered with her purdy lil eyes closed, thus demonstrating her overall intelligence and political savvy. But instead, Couric opted for the low road and spilt her vitriol in the form of the brutally difficult what she reads question.

And Gibson? She should've smacked those obnoxious glasses right off of Gippetto's face. Sure, Gibson tried to mask his intense hatred for Palin by seeming to act in the same near-catatonic, monotone manner that he does during every single other interview he's ever given, but we could see right through that charade. He can't stand Palin, and it showed...or didn't...but we knew it was there...sort of...I think...we just couldn't see it, that's all. Doesn't mean it wasn't there. Kind of like WMD.

Call me crazy, but I deem Couric's behavior, and the harsh treatment by Gibson, an egregious abuse of the public's trust and an affront to professional journalists everywhere. Fire them both!

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Geoffrey Dunn: The First Ten Lies from Going Rogue

2009-11-13T00:08:06Z

Excerpts from Sarah Palin's Going Rogue have been released by several news agencies and other sources who have received advanced copies. Here are the first ten lies from Palin's memoirs:

The Cover Byline: Palin didn't write the book by herself. Most books with known ghostwriters list their co-author's name on the cover. In this case it was Lynn Vincent (a well-known homophobe). Going Rogue does not.

The Subtitle: An American Life. Aside from her infancy, Palin has really spent very little time outside of Alaska, and according to John McCain's campaign advisors, was shockingly unfamiliar with American geography and American history. "Alaska," as John McPhee noted in his resplendent Coming Into the Country, "is a foreign country...Its nature is its own."

Going Rogue features Palin's obsession with Katie Couric and characterizes the CBS anchor as "badgering." Palin refused to prep for the Couric interview because she was more concerned about her popularity in Alaska than about what was best for the campaign. Was it really badgering to ask what books or periodicals Palin read? Palin further claims that Couric suffered from low self-esteem. In fact, according to those close to Palin, it's the former governor who suffers from low self-esteem and frequently projects that onto other women.

Palin asserts that there was a "jaded aura" around McCain's political advisors once she entered the campaign. In fact, McCain's aides bent over backwards to protect Palin and to try to get her up to speed on international affairs. In addition to not knowing whether or not Africa was a continent, according to sources in the McCain campaign, Palin also didn't understand the difference between England and Great Britain. And much, much more.

Palin contends to have been saddled with legal bills of more than $500,000 resulting from what she calls "frivolous" ethics complaints filed against her. The lion's share of those bills resulted from the ethics complaint she filed against herself in a legal maneuver to sidestep the Troopergate charges being brought against her by the bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council.

Palin rather astonishingly claims that she was saddled with $50,000 in bills for the legal fees associated with her vice-presidential vetting. A) She was not vetted; B) A McCain campaign advisor says this is "categorically untrue."

Palin states that she found out only "minutes" before John McCain's concession speech that she would not be allowed to make remarks of her own introducing McCain. In fact, she had been told at least three times that she would not be allowed to give the speech and kept lying about it in the hopes of creating some last-minute chaos that would allow her to assume the dais.

Palin asserts that her effort to award a license for a natural gas transmission line was turning a "pipe dream" into a pipeline. Although she claimed otherwise in her speech at the GOP convention, there is no pipeline. It remains a pipe dream.

Palin implies that the McCain campaign intentionally bungled the release of information regarding her daughter Bristol's pregnancy and refused to let her rewrite it. In fact, the McCain campaign allowed her to rework the draft, but the original version went out accidentally. Palin reportedly accepted the recalcitrant staff member's apology for the mistake, then when she left, ordered her immediately dismissed of her duties.

Palin complains that McCain's senior advisors, most notably Steve Schmidt, forced her to "stick with the script" they provided her. In fact, Schmidt & Co. were encumbered with the task of keeping Palin from lying and misleading people throughout the campaign, from her well-documented lies about the "Bridge to Nowhere" to her duplicities about her husband Todd's assocation with the Alaska Independence Party. Palin's lying to those in the McCain campaign was so troubling to them that they cringed every time she went "off script."

And that's just for starters.

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn's book The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power will be released by St. Martin's Press in spring 2010.

Dr. Jon LaPook: How To Save Billions in Health Costs Starting Now

2009-11-12T18:59:43Z

President Obama has stressed the importance of "bending the cost curve" in order to put the brakes on galloping health care expenses that total 2.5 trillion dollars a year and are increasing at 6% a year. The fastest way to do this is shockingly simple: carefully explain to patients the known risks and benefits of procedures.

Dr. Elliott S. Fisher, Director of Dartmouth's Center for Health Policy Research, estimates that thirty to forty percent of elective procedures are unnecessary. This includes elective angioplasty ($16,000), spinal fusion ($22,300), knee replacement ($14,400), and hip replacement ($15,700).

And it's not just costly procedures that are ballooning our health tab; the annual price for diagnostic imaging studies such at CT's and MRI's is about 100 billion dollars, roughly 35% of which is estimated to be wasted.

A prime example of an overused procedure is angioplasty, which opens up clogged arteries in the heart. Over a million are performed every year in the United States. Most patients believe it will prevent a heart attack and prolong life. But that's only true if the procedure is performed when a patient is actually showing signs of a heart attack. In elective cases which, according to the American College of Cardiology's National Cardiovascular Data Registry, account for 37% of angioplasties, it has not been shown either to prevent heart attack or prolong life. For a segment that aired last June on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic told me, "Cardiovascular interventional procedures are big money makers for hospitals and for practitioners." For a lot of doctors, "it's tough to walk away from that."

Our fee-for-service payment system certainly creates perverse incentives for doctors, a major reason for the spiraling cost of health care. But there is another factor that is more insidious: the reluctance of physicians to accept new evidence about the medicine they practice. For example, doctors have been taught for many years that an open artery is always better than a closed one. Despite convincing data showing that this simply isn't true, many physicians remain unconvinced and refuse to change their behavior.

When I interviewed President Obama about health care in July, I asked him about unnecessary elective angioplasties and the friction between what a physician believes to be true and what is supported by evidence-based medicine. He replied, "I have enormous faith in doctors. I think they always want to do the right thing for patients. But I also think, if we're honest, doctors, right now, have disincentives to making the better choices in the situations you talked about. If you are getting paid more for the angioplasty, then that subconsciously even might make you think the angioplasty is the better route to take. And so if we're reimbursing the physician not on the basis of how many procedures you're performing but rather how are you caring for the patient overall - what are the outcomes - then I think you start seeing some different choices."

Trying to figure out which medical interventions actually work is the whole point of the so-called "comparative effectiveness" studies for which Congress has budgeted 1.1 billion dollars. There has already been good progress in this kind of research. Aside from data showing that elective angioplasties don't save lives, a recent study found that vertebroplasty, a common procedure to treat pain from back fractures, was no better than a placebo treatment with a shot to temporarily numb the area.

Ultimately, insurers will try to change behavior by refusing to cover services that have performed poorly in comparative effectiveness research. That strategy will likely take years to implement and will be complicated by the fact that medicine is both an art and a science and will never be able to be reduced to perfectly predictable algorithms. Clinical judgment and even what has recently become a politically incorrect term - intuition - will always play an important role.

So how do we save billions starting now? By doctors and patients agreeing to discuss carefully whether procedures and tests are worth it.

This will have to involve consent forms. A review of hundreds of these forms at more than 150 hospitals found them to be of "limited value."

They are loaded with confusing language, often omit specific risks and benefits, and are generally not well explained by doctors. Patients often sign the forms minutes before a procedure without even reading them. Experts such as Dr. Fisher say that 30-40% of unnecessary procedures could be eliminated through proper informed consent - what is increasing being called "informed patient choice" to emphasize that doing the suggested procedure is not a foregone conclusion.

Gerry O'Connor, PhD, Associate Dean for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, has implemented a pilot program that personalizes the consent process. In the case of angioplasty, the physician collects detailed medical information about a patient, then searches a database of angiogram results to estimate individual risks and benefits by finding out what happened to similar patients who had the same procedure.

"It's not generic," he told me. "It's for people like you. If we get that right, we'll create a better informed consent."

Ultimately, electronic medical records will connect with electronic medical knowledge, including comparative effectiveness results, to give doctors and patients information - so-called "decision support" - at the moment a test or procedure is electronically ordered. But until then, and starting immediately, doctors and patients can try the low-tech solution of setting aside enough time to weigh adequately the pros and cons of medical options - not just for procedures but for other treatments and diagnostic studies. Of course, this is more easily said than done in a system that reimburses far better for doing things to patients than for communicating with them. That must change.

A-List Celebs Line Up For Concert For Autism

2009-11-12T12:15:56Z

What do Jerry Seinfeld, Bruce Springsteen and Donald Trump have in common? They, along with a bunch of other A-List celebrities are making appearances at the Autism Speaks Concert For Autism on November 17 at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

This year's star-studded event will feature comedian Jerry Seinfeld, with a special appearance by "The Boss", Bruce Springsteen. The evening will be hosted by NBC's Meet the Press moderator, David Gregory, on November 17, at world famous landmark Carnegie Hall. Your participation in this global cause will benefit the families and individuals who live with autism every day by supporting research, awareness and family services initiatives.

We love celebrities supporting a good cause and this one has no dearth of them: Jamie Foxx, Ellen DeGeneres, Tina Fey, Conan O'Brien, Seth Rogen, Martha Stewart, Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira, Glenn Close, Celine Dion, Will Ferrell, Edie Falco, Troy Aikman, and Harry Smith are a few of the many committee members supporting the event.

Larry King even twittered about the event earlier today.

Read more about the event at Autismspeaks.org or see if you can snag a few last minute tickets by e-mailing ConcertforAutism@AutismSpeaks.org. The site has some great information about autism and how it affects children and families.

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Lesley M. M. Blume: 12 Glamorous Role Models Talk About Their Role Models (PHOTOS)

2009-11-10T12:20:04Z

If someone invited you to a dinner party, and told you that the other guests would include poet Maya Angelou, designer Stella McCartney, Ambassador Susan Rice, and comedienne Amy Poehler (oh, and Michelle Obama might just stop by for appetizers), how long would it take you to leap out of your seat and scramble over to the fete?

You'd get there in record time, I bet.

Last night I had a comparable experience: I was given a catbird seat at the events celebrating Glamour magazine's Women of the Year awards, which honored the ladies mentioned above and many other "courageous and inspiring women who are changing the world."

It's a little bit weird to be in such close proximity to some of our era's amazons: several of them are literally Amazonian, like Iman or Tyra Banks (I'm not a short woman and I still felt mouse-like standing in front of them with my little tape recorder). Others, like Ambassador Rice, are surprisingly tiny but could absolutely bowl you over with their stare.

The important role that mentoring plays in women's lives was the theme of the night; Honoree Michelle Obama discusses it with particular intensity in Glamour's December Issue.

"For me, role modeling was immediate, it was touchable," she says. "I had people rooting for me ... it really makes a difference."

She's a very lucky lady in this respect: having role models and mentors can make a huge difference in a young woman's life. I still have my icons, who strengthen my resolve on a daily basis (my beloved copies of Diana Vreeland's DV and Marlene Dietrich's ABC are often secretly tucked into my bag for courage during big, nervous-making interviews). Female writers have been writing about the importance of encouragement and example for generations; Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker both avidly emphasize the importance of "forerunners."

So, with this in mind, I trotted around the Women of the Year dinner and asked a handful of prominent women who their earliest female role models were. After all, as Stella McCartney said at one point during the evening, "behind every great woman is a great woman."

Read the excerpts below each slideshow picture to see who has influenced some of our era's most visible ladies. Not surprisingly, "mom" gets the center stage in most of their stories.

Click here for more coverage about the Glamour Magazine 2009 Women of the Year Awards.

Andre Agassi's "Open": Meth, Bitterness, And Bad Hair (VIDEO)

2009-11-09T09:46:53Z

Andre Agassi's new memoir, Open, out today, has been causing a stir because of major revelations in the book -- that Agassi used crystal meth regularly, that he hid a deep hatred of tennis for most of his life, and that he wore a toupee before shaving his head. These have comprised most of the gossip surrounding the book, and are the only reasons to read it, according to some. The St. Augustine Record quips:

You tennis fans want a quick way to save $30? Tennis legend Andre Agassi hated tennis, despised his father, used crystal meth during his playing career and lied his way out of a positive drug test. Nothing like condensing a 300-page book into three lines of The Rant.

Others, however, find value in the quality of writing, due in no small part, presumably, to J. R. Moehringer, author of The Tender Bar and Agassi's partner in writing Open. The New York Times, highlighting a discomfort with the ghostwriting that is clearly at least partially responsible for the memoir, wonders:

...which of them actually wrote "it's the main reason for my pigeon-toed walk" about Mr. Agassi's troublesome bottom vertebra. The ease with which Mr. Moehringer slips into telling someone else's story is both consummate and spooky.

The Times goes on to appreciate the thematic symmetry of the narration, noting that the book both starts and ends with a tennis match, each in their own way "all-important."

Generally, responses have been somewhat skeptical of Agassi's new-found frankness. The Telegraph wonders if perhaps Agassi is willing to leak these painful secrets, all the while feeding newspaper gossip, less out of a coming-clean wish to finally tell the truth than out of an interest in book sales:

...[w]hat must really have pleased Agassi about the propagation of his tale is that every article, every opinion piece, every column reacting to the news has made mention of its source: his freshly published autobiography. Which was, presumably, the point in the first place.

While much has been made of Agassi's admission of using crystal meth in 1997, people seem just as much interested, if not more so in some cases, in his hair woes. The Miami Herald frames his toupee use as almost as shocking as the meth use:

Andre Agassi's admission that he dabbled in crystal meth 12 years ago is hardly the only shocking confession in his memoir...

Despite all of the controversy and skepticism surrounding the book, there seems to be something to be said for Agassi's new-found Openness, and a 60 Minutes interview with Katie Couric this weekend reveals how compelling the story of a boy with no other choice than to become a tennis champion can be.

WATCH:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

For Part Two, click here.

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Al Gore Explains How Call For Climate Change Action Is Similar To Civil Rights Movement (Video)

2009-11-02T22:25:28Z

The push for government action on climate change is like the US civil rights movement, according to former Vice President Al Gore. Both causes depended on and depend on a grassroots call to change.

Gore talked about those similarities during webcast interview with Katie Couric about his new book Our Choice, his follow-up to the film about global warming An Inconvenient Truth.

Couric referred to Gore as the "Godfather of Green" before beginning the 32-minute interview. Gore touched on the the moral issues surrounding inaction on climate change as well as cap and trade legislation specifics.

Watch the interview:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Laura Ziskin: Beyond Baseball

2009-11-01T14:44:40Z

Saturday night's World Series game was one for the record books for many reasons, but mostly because of those "priceless" thirty seconds in the second inning. No, I'm not talking about Jayson Werth's homer, I am referring to something that is, dare I say, more important than what happens inside the diamond or who prevails as a champion.

MasterCard generously turned over its beloved "Priceless" campaign to Stand Up To Cancer for what became a powerful 30 second call-to-action to fund innovative cancer research. Part of the spot aired live from Citizens Bank Park and featured cancer advocate and Stand Up To Cancer champion, Katie Couric, actors Terrence Howard and Minka Kelly (both of whom lost their mothers to cancer), and former Philly first baseman and cancer survivor John Kruk standing alongside brave patients from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia battling this difficult disease. About fifty thousand fans (and millions more at home) stood with us Saturday night in memory of all those lost and all those in the fight against a disease that claims 1,500 American lives a day. It was a profoundly moving moment that tapped into the best of baseball and the best in corporate sponsorship on an issue that affects us all.

Marketing experts might call this effort corporate responsibility, cause related marketing, a service initiative or some other fancy name. Major League Baseball calls it "Beyond Baseball."

These days professional baseball is as much about hits and runs as it is about players visiting pediatric cancer hospitals, swinging pink bats on Mother's Day in honor of mothers and daughters lost to breast cancer, and encouraging our fathers and sons to get PSA screenings on Father's Day. And that's just cancer. Every organization in every baseball city participates in charities and causes that touch everything from health to education to community building to volunteerism.

Stand Up To Cancer is one of the four charities benefiting from the unprecedented platform of the World Series. The 2009 Postseason will provide images that fill us with pride: a military veteran returning home from duty to throw out the first-pitch; a game dedicated to Roberto Clemente's legacy of volunteerism and community service; and the celebration of the significant impact Boys & Girls Clubs of America have had on our youth.

For all of its history and accomplishments, I think it's this Beyond Baseball idea that will be baseball's most enduring legacy, as it is arguably one of the reasons fan support is so deep and builds with every generation.

Many fans first developed their love to baseball by playing catch in the backyard. Similarly, fans have personally connected to charities and causes thanks to our national pastime. Baseball history is as much rooted in Lou Gehrig's 2,130 consecutive games, as it is for its work with the ALS Association. We tear up at the memory of Mike Piazza's walk-off home run in the first game after the tragedy of 9/11, as we do when we remember players lining up to feed firemen and police officers working to clear the rubble at Ground Zero. The indelible images of our past include the presence of the U.S. Military Color Guards in the postseason. Our future will be brighter thanks to Welcome Back Veterans, an organization dedicated to supporting military personnel returning to civilian life, and the emotional centerpiece of game one.

As the country comes together to celebrate the Fall Classic, let's heed MLB's call and remember to participate in things beyond Beyond Baseball. Only a rare few are able to hit a 90-mile an hour fastball, steal a base or pitch a shut out inning, but all of us can make a significant difference in the quality of life we share with our fellow citizens. Baseball has long allowed us to collectively cheer for our favorite teams, ballplayers and plays. On Saturday night, Major League Baseball showed us we could shout just as loud and wave our towels just as hard for the end of cancer. And that is something every fan can be proud of.

Here is the Stand Up To Cancer "Priceless" moment.

HuffPost Game Changers: Who Is The Ultimate Game Changer In Media?

2009-10-29T17:11:54Z

(VOTING IS NOW CLOSED)

HuffPost's Game Changers celebrates 100 innovators, visionaries, and leaders in 10 categories who are harnessing the power of new media to reshape their fields and change the world. With your help, we've picked 10 people who are changing the game in Media. We honor and salute them.

Now it's up to you to pick the Ultimate Media Game Changer. Click through the slideshow below, get the lowdown on why we chose them, then VOTE. We'll reveal the Ultimate 10 in November.

Catie Lazarus: TV Review: The Good Wife

2009-10-29T16:48:21Z

ON WIFEDOM

"He'll know how much it costs to rape someone and
get away with it," Christie Barbosa (Paloma Guzman) says to her lawyers, namely
Alicia Florrick, to justify how, even as a struggling stripper, she'll turn
down an almost half-million dollars in an out-of-court settlement. Fewer than two
percent of women lie about sexual assault, but as the one-hour drama is art
imitating life, the rape victim's motives are questioned in more detail than
those of her rapist, a sleazy, entitled politician named Lloyd McKean. Alicia
discovers more tidbits (also known as conflict of interest) about McKean when
visiting her husband Peter in jail before work, one morning, the way one might
sneak in a jog.

McKean and the District Attorney's office make it difficult
for our "young" associate to secure evidence, instead explicitly
deriding Alicia about her husband's infidelity. Several times, sexual violence,
infidelity and rape, are mentioned as interchangeable, at least Alicia briefs her cohorts, however flatly, that how power issues and "isms" fall on a continuum.

She does feel insecure enough to ask a personal question
when gather evidence at an escort service, why men pay to be sexually serviced,
and why some services, like not wearing a condom, are more expensive?" The
assistant at the escort service explains that boys will be boys and they ask
for, "What ever they can't get at home." Men could try springing these
special requests on their wives before giving them (or the escorts) HPV.

Weaved into the main story about a rape case, are the
questions for the wife and children of a politician's sex scandal, including
being forced to see and hear graphic images one would rather not view under
kosher circumstances. Peter remains clueless to the impact of his behavior and
during a visit asks her, "When are you going to stop thinking I have sex
with everyone? When are you going to forgive me?" Alicia can't answer what
must be a rhetorical question, although she does ask him several of her own,
like, where he was at their daughter's Grace's 12th birthday party, when he "had"
to leave early. Not a wisp of her hair falls out of place. (Although, this is a
woman who goes to bed caked in makeup.)

The judge is a white male, so liberal, Alicia's boss, jokes
that he, "makes Ralph Nader look like Rush Limbaugh." The Judge even
forces the court to take a moment of silence to reflect on those in Darfur. (If
some one that progressive would warm the bench, let it be known that they
should sport a plastic bracelet or ribbon pen. Nothing says compassion like
accessories.)

He isn't as progressive when it comes to sexual violence and
refuses to re-examine a DNA sample, evidence that would better resolve a sexual
assault case than eyewitness testimony. The idea that a liberal male might still
be sexist is not news, but The Good Wife deftly hints at how even the most well
meaning of us, men and women, aren't always well doing.

The show ends without answering why a spurned woman would be
an effective champion for a sexual assault case, although it implies that
empathy is one of the unwritten duties. Wives don't do good or bad acts, they
are good or bad, and to be a good wife means to be sexually frustrated, able to
see the imbalances of power and dance around them, but not (yet) able to solve
them. The answer probably won't lie in future episodes of The Good Wife or on
Oprah or a Sarah Palin bipoic, but at least The Good Wife asks substantive
questions.

Andrea Chalupa: Hulaween: Making New York City a Little More Like Hawaii

2009-10-28T12:16:36Z

Hawaii and New York have absolutely nothing in common, except for making Bette Midler the Eco-Diva she is today.

This Friday, October 30th, Ms. Midler is throwing her annual Hulaween Ball,
a lavish Halloween wonderland in the Waldorf Astoria, with a little
hula-flavor--a nod to her Hawaiian roots. It is the most important
event of the year for her non-profit, The New York Restoration Project,
an organization determined, among many other things, to plant a million
trees in New York. It's up to 250,000 trees planted, and counting.

The
organization, which raises most of its funding from Hulaween, works hard to
help ensure that every nature-starved New Yorker lives within walking
distance to a "green space." Other greening initiatives include youth education programs, building community gardens and events in low-income neighborhoods.

I spoke with Midler
last spring about "rough" New York in the 1970s, when it was dangerous
to step foot in Central Park at any hour of the day. Hit by another
economic catastrophe, New York depends on NYRP programs to prevent the
city from sliding back into dangerville. And plus, the earth, overall,
could use a heckuva lot more trees.

"We've reached the tipping point, if we don't do something soon it'll be irreversible," she said about the world's other crisis, global warming.

Her
star-packed line-up of supporters agree. This year's Hulaween includes
Whoopi Goldberg, designer Michael Kors as costume judge, comedienne
Judy Gold as emcee and Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be honored with
Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings Award" for his dedication to helping
NYRP green New York, including introducing hybrids into New York's taxi
fleet.

As a reporter who crashes and gets invited to a lot of
events in New York, I am absolutely in love with the fantasy-land of
Hulaween, created by the company of legendary event designer, Robert
Isabell, who passed away this summer. Isabell designed weddings for
both Caroline and John Kennedy as well as notorious parties at Studio
54 and is considered the "King of Wow."

Tickets to Hulaween
are $640, including pre-dinner cocktails, dinner, and the evenings
performance. Last year Gloria Estefon, dressed in goth, lit up the
stage, and this year Crosby, Stills, & Nash will round-out the
evening.

Other guests include Katie Couric, Martha Stewart, John McEnroe, Pattie Smyth, and awesome musician Sia.

Glynnis MacNicol: Top Ten Outrageous Sarah Palin Stories Oprah Will Have To Address

2009-10-21T13:12:10Z

As reported yesterday, Sarah Palin will make her Oprah debut on November 16, one day before her already best-selling book Going Rogue is released to the public. We, also noted yesterday that the lack of Oprah's presence during the 2008 political season (she removed herself after publicly declaring support for Barack Obama) was particularly felt after Sarah Palin entered the race and it became clear she was perhaps not equipped for the role of vice president. That said, it's clear that Palin is hoping to relaunch her political career with the release of her memoir this November so no time like the present!

Palin has done only a handful of interviews since she and McCain lost the election last November, most recently appearing on the Today show in June with Matt Lauer to respond to David Letterman's late night joke about her daughter. But it's been a while since she's been on the hot seat (read: Katie Couric) and there's certainly plenty to talk about! In an effort to help Oprah prepare for her interview we've compiled a top ten list of of outrageous questions about Sarah Palin that will need to be addressed.

Baby Daddy Levi In The Centerfold

1. Oh Levi. In the last few months, while Sarah Palin was locked away furiously writing her memoir, Levi Johnston, father to Palin's grandson Trip, has been enjoying most of the Palin spotlight. Johnston has taken his 15 minutes of fame as an opportunity to bare all: first in a long piece in October's Vanity Fair and now, in the more literal sense of bare, as an upcoming Playgirl centerfold (maybe).

Who's Your Mommy: Palin and the Trig Birthers

2. Calling Andrew Sullivan and the Sarah Palin birthers! Ever since Palin stepped into the national spotlight in August 2008 there has been persistent speculation as to whether she is truly the mother of her youngest son Trig or whether the baby actually belongs her daughter Bristol and Palin's merely claimed to be his parent as some sort of cover-up. Levi hit on the sensitive subject again in his first-person VF piece. It remains to be seen if Palin mentions it in her memoir, but if she's considering another run for public office it's absolutely fair game for Oprah. Below, a typical birther vid.

>>>NEXT: The Couric Interviews, Hungry Like An Aerial Wolf, 'And Her Tina Fey Glasses!

Geoffrey Dunn: McCain's Latest Palin Lie

2009-10-13T21:31:05Z

John McCain's duplicitous defense of his 2008 GOP running mate Sarah Palin this past weekend is as dishonest as it is shameful. He knows better--but for reasons that are rooted deeply in McCain's peculiar sense of chivalry and his political self-interest, he has refused to come clean about Palin with the American people.

"There are fundamental facts that cannot be denied," he asserted on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. "When we selected, or asked, Sarah Palin to be my running mate, it energized our party. We were ahead in the polls, until the stock market crashed."

The implication is that the Republicans would have won were it not for the economic collapse that took place on September 15.

Many McCain and Palin operatives in the aftermath of the election have blamed the economy for their loss. That's like blaming a lake in the middle of the 18th fairway for costing one a golf match. The lake doesn't cost you the match--driving your ball into it does.

The economy collapsed for the Democrats, too. They had the same hazards in their fairway as the Republicans. Moreover, the economy was not Obama's strong suit. He didn't play well to white working class voters and he had a hard time articulating how he was going to address the banking collapse.

But let's take a look at some "fundamental facts" about McCain and the economy:

In 2005, McCain told the Wall Street Journal: "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."

In 2007, McCain told the Boston Globe: "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should."

On August 20, only days before he selected Palin, McCain told the press he did not know how many houses he owned.

On the morning of September 15, the day on which the McCain-Palin campaign tanked in the polls, John McCain said: "Our economy, I think still--the fundamentals of our economy are strong." (Even Rick Davis, McCain's ever-loyal campaign manager, said he wished that McCain had never made that remark.) The following day, McCain's economic adviser Carly Fiorina said that Sarah Palin was "not fit" to run a Fortune 500 company.

While McCain was undertaking his hackneyed "suspension of his campaign" and rushing back to Washington, Palin was nowhere to be seen. The campaign did not want to unleash her on the American people. And when McCain finally arrived in the capital, his Republican colleagues in Congress scattered. As it turned out, John McCain had very few friends in Congress on either side of the isle.

And what did Palin have to say about the economy? Here, in her immortal words, is Palin's response to Katie Couric's question about the federal bailout package:

That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it's got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade -- we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation.

I would hope that John McCain would have the decency to re-read those words and follow his running mate's eyes as she delivered them. Comforting they were not. Tina Fey did not have to change a single word.

While McCain may have a difficult time accepting "the fundamental facts" of the 2008 election, the Obama insiders who conducted polls about Palin know what happened.

Joel Benson, Obama's chief pollster, noted that after Palin's devastating performance with Couric, "Palin went from having, in our poll, the highest favorable/unfavorable ratio to the worst of the four principals. By the time she got to the vice-presidential debate, in our polling, her negatives were almost as high as her positives." In other words, stick a fork in it.

One former key McCain campaign strategist has called his colleagues' excuses about Palin and the economy "intellectually dishonest." So be it.

Did Palin give a "bounce" to the McCain campaign in the early weeks of September? Absolutely. Did her balloon come crashing back to earth once the American people caught on to her act? You betcha.

It's time for John McCain to tell the truth about his campaign and, rather than blame his own failures on "the stock market crash," to accept responsibility for the failures of his economic credibility and the selection of his running mate. He's yet to address the real "fundamental facts" of the 2008 campaign.

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn is at work on a book about Sarah Palin and American politics, to be published by Macmillan/St. Martin's next year.