The Reason Behind Sharing the Photo… *Update*

What a delightful, lively group you are! Thank you to everyone who contributed to the last post – and I hope this post will answer the big question ultimately hanging over my head like an annoying thought bubble… what in the Sam Hill were you getting at lady? (Which is, actually, a common question posed by my spouse almost daily for numerous subjects!)

When cliveden posted a link and a question in another comments section, I casually strolled across the web to have a sticky beak (that means take a look for you mainlanders). I found the photo, captured it and reposted it here to get all your opinions. The next day I went back to the site and began perusing the other entries. By the third one I was sitting straight up in my seat, alarmed and uncomfortable.

I immediately removed the link from my comments and sent cliveden an email explaining my reasons. I asked her to please not post it anywhere else until I’d had a chance to show it to a professional, get his opinion, and capture certain information that might otherwise disappear (like some myspace accounts) should the quiet blog suddenly be the recipient of heavy traffic.

To be perfectly honest, my initial impression of the photo was that it had been photo-shopped by the blog author. The post read like a quiet occasion shared by two close friends. But in reading further it began to feel more like the long, melancholy letter one would write to a lover at sea, referring to one of the Palin women as ‘my sweetness’ and reading the posts felt like such an intrusion of privacy I had to stop. On the advice of a friend and professional, I’ve sent the link to Alaska authorities. On the advice of a friend and a blogger, I’m not going to release the link here and sincerely hope that any of you who might be privy to the web address will not make it public, either.

We have a responsibility – all of us – on all sides of the political aisle – to ensure we have a place to conduct deeply passionate, heated discussions about our policies, our elected officials, our elected-wannabes and in these rooms we share some pretty adamant, unyielding and differing opinions of people. But one thing we need to always agree on and that is we mean no one actual physical harm. I am genuinely concerned that the author of the blog I read is troubled, pathologically focused on the Palin family and neither I nor any of my readers need to be the catalyst for putting this poor soul over the edge.

And then I had an email exchange with Gryphen from tIM in which he not only confirmed my reactions but had this profound statement to add as well:

As things with the Palins start to die down there are a few VERY unhinged people, on both sides of the spectrum, who seem to be having an especially hard time letting things go.  Just recently  Shawn Christy decided to plead guilty (
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/sarah-palins-stalker-plead-guilty
) which is good because he was another one who was becoming increasingly scary.

Sarah and Todd Palin may very well be genuine phonies who grifted their way to fame and fortune, cheating the general public out of millions of dollars – but as disingenuous as they might be, stalkers are very real. And unfortunately we can’t always know who they are because – well, for one thing, they don’t wear name tags. So for now, at least, I’m taking the high road and not releasing the blog link.

But that said… a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Commenter Carolyn stepped forward to identify the photo in question and if nothing else, her knowledge of the event convinced me that the melancholy blogger is not responsible for any alterations which may have befallen our wedding mystery photo of Sarah & Todd – so that event and this photo are – in my humble opinion – up for grabs, topic wise. The link is off limits, but the photo is still in play.

A short tutorial in photo-shopping:

Behold the following photo of Todd Palin taken by a professional photographer with a high quality resolution of 300 pixels (dots) per inch (.dpi). When you lighten or enlarge this photo, the image (in particular the shadow on his cheek) doesn’t lose integrity. That’s because at 300 dpi there are enough pixels (dots) in each square inch to maintain the original image as it stretches. The image is left with clean, undistorted lines.

(Click image to enlarge)

Now we have a photo of Todd taken with a lesser quality camera and uploaded to youtube. The end result is an image resolution of 72 dpi – which is normally suitable for most images but the conversion to a youtube format added another process called compression. I found this answer on a forum to be the most comprehensive:

Image compression, like what is used for JPEG files, does just what it sounds like it does: it takes all of the data recorded by the sensor … and eliminates redundancies to create a smaller file size. In practice, this process takes the form of reducing the number of recorded colors to those specifically found in the image, and combining data from closely-colored pixels sitting near each other. The more heavily you apply this process the smaller the file will be, but the more details will be lost.

(Click to enlarge)

Simple shadows taken at a low resolution and then compressed lend a gritty look to normal shadows. In the case  of the August 17 youtube clip, the normal shadow on Tod’s cheeks appear darker than in the original image. When that same image is subsequently sharpened to pull it back into focus, a shadow can appear so gritty it gives the appearance of being a creeping beard.

The image of Todd in the wedding photo – to me – looks like a compressed photo that’s been shopped into a bigger picture. The image has been changed probably in size and then had a sharpening tool applied to compensate for the small distortions left behind. Interestingly enough, someone commented earlier on Todd missing his right ear. As you can see in the above image, compression and/or alteration can leave rough-looking, jagged edges which then need to be erased to hide or painted over to blend into the parent image. In either case, Todd is looking ‘almost’ straight on into the camera and – imho – at least a portion of his right ear should have been visible.

I can’t imagine this is a genuine photo of Sarah & Todd, even though I told Carolyn I would bow to her knowledge of this event – so I will bow out of this now with just one final observation…

What on earth did Todd do to ‘chubby up’ so dramatically in only 8 days?

 

============   UPDATE   ============

I am truly sorry the original conversation of the last two posts got derailed but will attempt to respond to a couple of things here. I am remiss in not having been more clear to begin with so allow me to backtrack:

A commenter sent me a photo and asked if I thought it was shopped or not. I had no stake in an outcome either way. My initial reaction was that yes, I thought it had been, although for what purpose I had no clue. Then I revisited the site of origin and became alarmed at the intimacy of the writing. It felt as if I’d opened a door to a room where I had no business being. Like a kid who accidentally walks in on his parents having sex – even though there were no parents here and no sex – just a style of writing that went well past a sense of correctness in blogging from a simple ‘fan’ in my opinion. So I pulled back and sought professional advice.

In the meantime Carolyn came on board and offered to share the original of this photo, knew the event it represented, some of the people involved and her knowledge answered a few of our questions. I have no evidence to support the suspicion that she lied when telling us the photo was genuine – but I also have no evidence which might support her claim of its authenticity, either. A couple of people dug around and located flickr accounts of this wedding event but not a single photo of Sarah & Todd appear in either of the flickr slideshows of the ceremony and reception, or in the newspaper account of the event which got a decent sized write-up in a local paper. Carolyn did provide a photo of Willow and Trig that I was delighted to receive because many of us have been disappointed by the lack of public photos of Trig growing up. But supporting photos of Sarah and Todd at this event? Not one.

I am not obsessed with this photo – I’ve just tried to be thorough. And the reason to even go down this avenue at all is because of the preponderance of evidence that has surfaced over the past three years showing how Sarahs initial quest for political power was riddled with false scenarios deliberately set up to make her appear more than she is. The release of emails alone showed Sarah to be rather deceptive and conniving inasmuch as she actually stooped to writing her own letters of praise and then had staff sign and submit them to local newspapers as if they represented the voice of the average Alaskan citizen . It was also discovered through these emails that Sarah had to locate and borrow a jogging stroller so she could be photographed with it in a national magazine ‘as if’ running with Trig in tow was a part of her normal routine. So in that vein, if this wedding photo is yet another phoney ploy concocted by the Palins for whatever reason, then we have every right to persue those facts.

Turning to my blog – it’s time I think to make a public commitment to all you reading my blog, whether you feel I’m one of the unhinged or not… everyone is welcome at Oz Mudflats. I have never and will never chastize a commenter or delete a comment because it is critical of my writing, my opinion or the subject of the post. A very wise professor once told my class - If we were each the same – one of us would be unnecessary. We need to praise and correct each other and be willing to take both as well. We need debate and differing opinions and opposing viewpoints to create and maintain a healthy balance in society and I do not preach what I do not practice. You may not get me to bend to your point of view but you’re welcome to try and I may do handstands to get you to see my side of an issue. I may clean up some of the more colourful language from time to time in the comments if I feel the cussing is overdone and could offend one of our more gentle readers but I will not ever delete the contribution itself or in any way attempt to humiliate the person behind it. In three years I’ve shown only one person the door and not for the thought behind the comment but because of the harsh language used to deliver it – but even that comment was left up after editing out a few of the fucks and suggesting he didn’t know me well enough to call me a slut.

This of course doesn’t mean I won’t challenge anyone who waves a red flag under my nose. I am half Irish after all. And I proudly voted for President Obama. It just means everyone is welcome here. No one of you will ever get a post, comment or email from me, belittling you, calling you rude or telling you to go away.

-Oz

 

Hey Sarah! About That Marathon! (not to beat a dead horse but…)

I may have gotten some details wrong in my assessment of Sarah Palin’s marathon photos in yesterday’s post, but I was happy to add the corrections that could be proven. And I appreciated all the comments by all the commenters, even those who adamantly disagreed with me or thought my post would make things worse for our cause.

Two things – nobody who matters in the media is paying the slightest bit of attention to our cause. I hardly see how anything we  do out here can make that worse. And for the record, energetic discussion and accidental discovery is good for the soul even if not everyone agrees with us or what we find is not what we were originally looking for. At least some of us aren’t afraid to keep looking (/Oz winks at Gryphen) even if the only thing we find is that we were wrong  (/Oz winks at Mel)

Next – for those who keep saying it doesn’t matter if Sarah ran this marathon or not – I beg to differ. It most certainly does matter. Sarah accepted the second place medal. If she didn’t genuinely earn it, she’s stolen it from the runner who did.  Athletes have medals stripped from them for cheating and reporters go out of their way to get the stories. Usually, anyway.

I’ve only known Sarah to run in two other races during the past three years. Each time there were cameras along the routes and in each she found a way to not complete them. Weird for such an avid runner huh?

And I don’t know about any of you but I find it terribly odd that there are no photos of Sarah during this race – only a single photo at the start, again at the end – and both seem odd in and of themselves. (Just like the photos during her faked pregnancy with Trig.)

But here’s a thought - Sarah’s entrance into the half-marathon is being reported as the concept of her PR group. To not have set up staff or fan-based volunteers with cell phones taking action shots of her along the route is just crazy. Those shots would have been money in the bank and votes at the ballot box. If you were her PR man how would you have set this up for maximum return?

But hey anything’s possible right?  So… not to keep beating the poor dead horse here but…

These are the top running times as posted by the Storm Lake Running Club for the Jump In & Run half-marathon, 04. Sept 2011:

(Please Note: I freely admit to not having permission to use the shot of runner #43 below and would be happy to reasonably compensate the owner.)

This is a photo of the woman posted online as the winner of the race overall - alongside Sarah who took second in her class:

[click images to enlarge]

If someone would be so kind as to demonstrate to me how the earth could possibly have rotated around the sun fast enough to create this humongous difference between the shadows of the first place runner crossing the finish line and Sarah crossing the same finish line exactly 8 minutes later without tossing some of us off the planet entirely- I’m certainly willing to listen.

Hmm… the earth suddenly rotating too fast would definitely explain where all the flags went

(editor’s note:  Yes, I originally said 12 minutes – serves me right for trying to do basic math before 6 am!)

 

Scattered Opinions About Bristol & DWTS

People across the country are noticing how those contestants who are genuinely working at becoming good/better dancers are being forced off the show while Bristol, who puts in almost no effort at all is voted back on week after week.

I read about how the Christian Right has organized massive votes to keep Bristol Palin on DWTS over at The Immoral Minority and went surfing to see what I could find from other posters. Because really, week after week, we all sort of grit our teeth and just pray she doesn’t fall and hurt herself  because let’s face it - the girl is just an abominably bad dancer. 

This is what I found:

Lovely Mittal – NewsXonline.com
Almost every week she gets the lowest scores particularly from the judges but she manages to slip back due to the voting system in the show which has a call in facility ,wherein the fans and supporters can just call and contribute to the number of votes to the contestant of their choice.
However in Bristol’s case there are reports doing the rounds that she gets her support from her mom Sarah Palin’s supporters.

As Sarah Palin is being seen as a strong contender for the forthcoming 2012 Presidential elections in the US, it is being floating around that the supporters of Sarah Palin are quite supportive of Bristol’s position in the coveted contest.

AAyles – Twirlit.com
Bristol Palin is not a good dancer. America may be stupid enough to waste their votes on a contestant who clearly shows no talent and little passion for the competition but the judges are there to do a job… For the first time in the history of Dancing with the Stars, that is not happening.

Celebrity Circuit – CBSNews.com
NEW YORK (CBS) After Tuesday night’s “Dancing with the Stars” elimination, many were surprised that Rick Fox was sent home - and equally as shocked that Bristol Palin is still in the competition.

Some may be wondering if her mother’s devoted Tea Party following is what’s keeping the young competitor afloat.

Jeff Kane – RobotCeleb.com
[Kane reports that Bristol tells Ellen - even though she obtained an absentee ballot, she forgot to mail it in so she didn't actually vote in the 2010 midterm elections. ] My favourite line comes at the very end:

“I wonder if her mom being on the (2012) ticket would be motivation enough for Bristol Palin to take five minutes out of her busy day to fill out a ballot and mail it in. She has to have at least some free time because judging by how she is dancing; she clearly isn’t spending her time in rehearsals.”

Jeff Kane – RobotCeleb.com
So did Bristol Palin really get that many calls? We will never know. DWTS has never revealed how their scoring system works. They have simply said that they take the judges scores and combined them with the votes, plug those numbers into a formula and come up with a final score. Since nobody knows how many votes people are getting it is impossible to know how this formula really works. Or, for that matter, if there is a formula at all. Perhaps Bristol has such a connection with the conservative side of the audience that they call in en masse and those votes help keep her around. Or maybe the producers know she is good for publicity and stirs up controversy and helps with ratings so they massage the numbers and keep her around.

I might have my tinfoil hat on, but after last night I think maybe there might be some truth out there among the fog.

A few of the comments:

Katttie: have not watched the show this year at all; very disinterested which started with “professional” dancers winning the competition in prior years. Now we have a very incompetent dancer who should have been voted off the first show, embarrassingly remaining, week after week…..thanks to the unfair advantage of the Tea Party. Shame on the show for not foreseeing this problem – it is very unfair to the remaining dancers. I don’t plan on ever watching again, haven’t missed it one bit.

mariapalestina: agree Bristol has worked hard and improved a lot along the way. But she must know she’s not up to the level of any of the other dancers, and I think part of the reason she is depressed (which she said she is) could be that she knows she doesn’t deserve to still be there. I don’t blame her if the Tea Baggers are trying to skew the voting. It’s just a shame because people should be judged for their dancing rather than for their mother’s politics.

ELBK: I’ve seen a couple of Tea Party blogs where they praise Bristol’s dancing and diss some of the other dancers’ style as “over the top.” Every week they post the number to call for Bristol and Mark. You know, though, the show should have foreseen this happening and, what’s more, they put this poor girl who is the only contestant without a performer background, in a position where she suffers humiliation week after week … If she wins the whole shibang, I don’t care. It’s just a dance contest.

ELBK: I like Bristol and really feel for her as she struggles to keep up on DWTS. She has landed “in jeopardy” so often, based on the judges’ scores, but then is magically lifted back into the contest by the voters. I voted for Bristol at the beginning and the night her mother was on I could not get through on the phone, which is unusual for DWTS. There is no doubt in my mind now that the Tea Baggers are voting for Bristol en masse and, if it keeps up, she will end up winning. That would be so unfair to the other, more talented people. DWTS should have foreseen this scenario. Not only is it unfair to the other dancers, but to Bristol also, who probably will catch on to what is going on if she hasn’t already, plus make the other dancers resent her.

Gary: SHUT UP ALREADY! If that was Chelsea Clinton up there you would all be stumbling over yourselves to vote for her! I think its great shoving another PALIN in all the liberals faces and actually the shock is they have yet to MANIULATE the vote to get her off! Sorry but the fat black dude from Disney goes tonite! Your lives are so meaningless that all you have to do is attack anything to do with Sarah Palin the rest of your lives? GO GET ONE!

One thing’s sure noticeable… people who are clearly not Palin fans are kind and generous with their comments about Bristol. People who clearly are Palin fans are nasty, threatenting and have no room in their world for any opinion other than their own. hmm…

But I’ve saved the very best for last:

Regan: Bristol’s mother is paying for people to attend the show???? I just read the article @ this link, and I have to say I was honestly disgusted.  It’s sad to see performing arts come to this.

The link provided in this comment leads us to the People.com TV Watch page and this tidbit:

It’s a long and expensive flight from Alaska to Los Angeles, but Bristol Palin has had a steady cheering section in the ballroom for Dancing With the Stars. How? Her parents, Sarah and Todd Palin, have been treating family and friends to plane tickets …As for how Piper, 9, and Willow, 16, manage to be in the ballroom on school nights, Palin says, “We work with the school to bring their schoolwork with us.”

You know I’m over 6,000 miles from Alaska but I swear I just heard Gryphen spit coffee across the room.

And at the very bottom of the article is a bonus announcement… evidently there’s a new People’s mag inteview hitting the stands Friday (oh that would be today!) called an in-depth look into Sarah and Todd’s 22 year marriage… Ok at least a dozen Alaskans lost their coffee on that one

To comment on this post pleae scroll up to the title “Scattered Opinions About Bristol & DWTS” and click on the word comments just beneath. Thanks, OzMud

 

Special Moron Watch: 144 Hours Until We Hear The Words… “Joe Who?”

Have been watching intently since my morning cuppa when I read Gryphen’s announcement @ The Immoral Minority about Joe Miller’s personnel file being released. When I saw the link to the whole .pdf file at the Alaska Dispatch I couldn’t wait to clockout. Their full report of this is a must read.

This is a file of emails so if you’re heading over there to read the lot, please scroll to the very bottom and read ‘up’. Where places appear to be out of chronological order, they’re actually not – original emails are often used to refer back to old topics by using them as replies. so a new email written in september might actually be attached to an older email wo the writer doesnt have to keep rewriting same information. Think of them as threads in a forum.

In case you can’t read a .pdf file, or in case the Alaska Dispatch servers become flooded, I’ve downloaded the entire file (I’d post it here but apparently wordpress doesn’t allow for .pdf downloads) and will try to sort  out a place to put it tomorrow night. (First I need sleep – then more work. Dratted job!)

However, I did read this from cover to cover and took some screenies of a few rather confronting bits of information. The whole truth about Joe usng the office computers and the ensuing consequences comes to light between the pdf pages (not the email page numbers) 33 through 19. Most informative. i’ve circled in bright pink where the pdf page numbers can be found in the file on the first screenie

This is what Joe Miller has been trying so desperately to hide from the Alsaka voters:

 

 This is a small portion of a five page statement made by Jill Dolan regarding finding her cache had been emptied – just after a period of time that she had left Joe lone in the office.

 

 This is most of Joe’s confession to his superior at FNSB. What you don’t see is his enthusiastic disclaimer which threatens all but bodily harm to anyone caught disclosing this document to anyone else.

 
Jill Dolan’s letter to Joe Miller informing him of an official investigation and his sidelining until said investigation has been completed.

 

 
 
Part of the email from Rene Broker at the conclusion of an investigation outlining part of his consequences.

 

So here we have factual confirmation. Joe Miller tried to use government computers to stuff a ballot box at a poll he created on his own website, lied about it until he realized he was caught with no way out, was investigated and disciplined.

A bit of noteworthy info: His disciplinary action put him on a six month probation which stipulated this letter of reprimand would be deleted from his personnel file after 2 years PROVIDING no further incidents occur during said probation.

BUT Joe apparently got mad just a few months later and walked off the job in a huff, leaving his work behind and the FNSB in the lurch. So – we ultimately have his anger mismanagement to thank for these files seeing the light of day.

Good job Alaska reporters and bloggers! kudos to everyone who persevered in getting these files out in the open.

Oh wait. Saved the best for last. I have one more teensy bit of fluff to share…

Hey Joe? You do know where Cobra comes from right? I mean technically, it’s called Cobra Law. Why? Because it *is* a *law*… and where do you think *laws* come from? Yup. You got it. That pesky darned gov’mint givin’ away the farm to undeserving folks like… you!

To comment on this post, please scroll up to the title “Special Moron Watch: 144 Hours Until We Hear The Words… “Joe Who?” and click on the word comments just beneath.  Thanks, OzMud

 

Rogue Star

Condensed from a post (30 Apr 2010) on The Immoral Minority blog (full story here)  and combined with a post at Palingates of the same date (full story here).

27 April 2010
Sarah Palin, contributor for Fox News and defender of their alleged fair and balanced reporting, appears on an edition of Hannity. The following transcription of Sarah’s own words follows a comment to Sean Hannity in which she describes normal news outlets as ‘lamestream media’ and accuses them of posting a [truly ridiculous] banner at the bottom of the screen during a news broadcast on Arizona’s new immigration law.

Quote: “One of the media outlets the other day just uh… it’s killin’ me on this one Sean where they had a caption across their screen which said this Arizona law will make it… will make it illegal to be an illegal immigrant some, some bizarre type of headline like that, it was just this illustration that they just don’t get it and that they are trying to turn this into something that it’s not…”

Oh dear… could Ms. Palin have meant this lamestream media? You know, the same fair and balanced folks at Fox News Channel who write her cheques?

(Screenshot lovingly lifted sans per mezzo from Gryphen’s post.)

Well it’s a good thing Fox News has that reputation for being fair and balanced, eh? It takes a special brand of generosity to overlook being mocked on one’s own network by one’s own protege. Especially a protege who’s being paid somewhere in the neighbourhood of a million bucks a year to make the mentor look good…

The question now is will Fox Execs respond or just let it go? Let’s have a sticky beak shall we?

Three days later…

From Fox News website:
30 April 2010

A Tennessee jury on Friday convicted the man who hacked Sarah Palin’s e-mail account on two of four charges — computer fraud and obstruction of justice. The panel did not find David Kernall guilty guilty [sic] of wire fraud. It deadlocked on an identity theft charge…

…Palin and her daughter Bristol testified during the trial, which lasted just a few days. Bristol Palin said she was distressed to find pictures of her newborn son in the public eye after her mother’s e-mail was hacked. Defense attorneys argued Kernall, the son of a Democratic state lawmaker, was just committing a college prank.

Oops.  Can’t you just hear someone at Fox whispering sorry, mybad!

In case you’ve missed the subtlety of this particular comment reported by a FNC reporter on the FNC website, let me take you back in time:

Reuters:
01 September 2008

The 17-year-old unmarried daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, according to aides of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, the aides said.

The Palins, in a statement released by the McCain campaign, said Bristol “came to us with news that we as parents knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned” and that their daughter “has our unconditional love and support.”

“We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates,” their statement said.

Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter’s pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.

McCain officials said the news of the daughter’s pregnancy was being released to rebut what one aide called “mud-slinging and lies” that have circulated on liberal blog sites.

According to these rumors, Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in April to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down syndrome. The rumor was that Trig was actually Bristol Palin’s child and that Sarah Palin was the grandmother

 It’s difficult to imagine how, just one week later, on 08 Sept 2008, Bristol Palin was deeply embarrassed and disturbed about seeing photos of her newborn baby online… you know, the one that hadn’t been born yet?

Now a lot of other bloggers are talking about this and the consensus of opinion from all of us is that we’ll just have to wait for the actual transcripts of the trial to be entered into public record to see if this is an accurate portrayal of Bristol’s testimony. But if this isn’t an accurate statement on the part of the reporter,  it is a bit odd that Fox News would be the group to print such a huge gaffe.

If Bristol actually said this on the witness stand, under oath, she’s just outed her mother in perhaps the biggest political hoax of this century.

If it isn’t an accurate accounting of what the young mother said on the stand, then Fox News, through pure hearsay,  has just made a huge donation to the cause against Sarah Palin ever becoming a legitimate public figure – because that post has already been up for over 24 hours. Even if they retract it somewhere down the road, they are the ones who put it out there and left it out there – unchallenged – for people to think about.

And here’s an additional perspective: If the reporter at FNC who ran this story is telling the truth, it’s entirely possible this ‘leak’ was Fox News Channels way of pulling the plug on their ungrateful, insolent Rogue Star.

If it isn’t, the inaccurate story could be Fox Execs subtle way of letting Sarah know they are still in charge. 

After all, big corporations don’t give you gobs of money without expecting a little something in return. Like maybe not bitch-slapping them around on their own airways, perhaps.

To comment on this post, please scroll up to the title “Rogue Star” and click on the word comment just beneath,  Thanks, OzMud

 

Trig Palin: For a little guy, you sure make a lot of big waves *footnote*

You know that glazed look your teenagers give while you’re attempting to explain why they can’t just drop all their math classes because they will actually need a working knowledge of math in order to succeed in life – no matter the path they choose?  Well, that’s the look my spouse now fires off at me whenever a sentence of mine begins with the two trigger words, ‘Sarah Palin’.

Even my stateside friends can be heard over the long-distance wire heaving a heavy ‘ohmigodhereshegoesagain’ sigh, followed quickly by an ‘ifIholdreallystillmaybeshewon’tnoticeI’mstillontheline’ inhale – to which I have adeptly given my curt… “I know you’re there I can hear you breathing!” reply.

The truth is, most of the world is tired of hearing from or about Sarah Palin. Rational people from all walks of life have dismissed her as a non-entity, as done a deal as the poor turkey in the 2008 Thanksgiving Pardoning death cone. I’ve personally heard the comment “She lost – she quit – she’s done – move on.”

But some of us can’t just ‘move on’. Some of us can still see those little legs twitching in the background, ignored and on-camera,  symbolic of how Sarah Palin treats all her family, friends and peers and for us, there can be no stopping until we know the list of Sarah Palin Victims is finished as well.

The blog list on the right of this post is made up of very dedicated, quite remarkable yet ordinary Americans who continue to donate their time and energy researching and writing without pay, that the rest of us might keep focused on the real Sarah Palin rather than succumb to the Madison Avenue image created by the John McCain staff in particular, the Republican Party in general, and her own personal greed, made fat by Harper-Collins publishing house.

The fact is, in 2008, Sarah Palin perpetrated a hoax on the American people. A hoax far worse than anything Tiger Woods could ever have done behind closed doors with a consenting adult, and yet Mr. Woods’ transgressions are all over the media while Sarah Palin’s hoax still remains sealed in a cardboard box in a locked storage room behind a well-marked ‘Keep Out’ sign.  For those of us who have glimpsed the contents of this box, it makes no sense whatsoever that the politicians, private citizens, educated physicians, and government officials who know the truth should remain silent, or that the media should not be scratching at the door en masse.

No other political aspirant to the White House Executive Staff in any history I can recall has ever, ever been allowed to skate past the press with such arrogant aplomb and total disregard for truth as Sarah Palin. To watch the national press allow this ne’er-do-well politician to slide by with garbled interviews, and outlandish personal stories a blind man could shoot holes through was appalling.

Last December I published a post on the discrepancies between the photos of baby Trig, (1) home from the hospital and cradled in Aunt Mercede’s arms and (2) just hours old in his grandmother’s arms in the hospital hallway. (Sarah, remember, couldn’t be photographed because she was ‘too-tired’.) It’s never made sense to me that the photo of the baby in the hospital corridor, just hours after birth, could show a Trig much bigger than the photo of him taken days later, after he’d been released and sent home.

It also seemed – to me – a bit out of character for a woman bold and brash enough to make a 12+ hour trip, in bad weather, on two separate airplanes with layovers in public airport lounges, to suddenly feign ‘fatigue’ as reason to not sit perfectly still in a comfy chair and have her photo taken holding her brand new ‘this is what I did all this travelling for’  newborn son.

For a woman who craves media attention the way Sarah does, that was like walking barefoot in the snow all the way to the candy shop only to ask the shopkeeper for asparagus instead.

A verbal comment which I’d never published came from the mother of the newborn bub I’d used to illustrate the difference between an actual 6+ lb newborn and Trig who was supposedly born at 6+ lbs. The two newborns were only a few ounces apart in birth weight, but their newborn photos were dramatically different. After reading the post she called to chat – and her very first comment about the two photos [above] of Trig were “Wow. It doesn’t even look like the same bub. No really, they look like two completely different infants.”

I’d only been trying to show that the birth date had to be wrong. My focus was on disproving Sarah’s wild ride from Texas to Alaska to give birth after her water had broken at a political conference. I hadn’t picked up on the actual visual differences between babies in the photos, purportedly all of baby Trig, other than the discrepancies in size on the date and first week of his little life.

So while I heard her comment, it didn’t raise any flags. Until…

Last month, I engaged in an email exchange with two different readers on the subject of Trig Palin’s true identity. These persons each purported to be a ‘friend of a friend’ who’d each had an odd conversation they wanted to pass along. I’ve combined them into one conversation. It went something like:

Emailee: If you and others know the truth about Trig’s birth, why on earth would you [or them] not come forward?

Response: What if the truth were so awful, so unimaginable that baby Trig would be traumatized if the truth came out?

Emailee:  Trig is just a baby – he’s too young to be traumatized by anything in the press, and whatever huge secret this is, it’s better out now than later when he can be actually traumatized, don’t you think?

Response: But what if it doesn’t involve just Trig. What if other children are involved?  What if all the children are involved?

One of the emailees was concerned about being responsible for ‘putting things in motion’. When asked what that meant, the reply was:

Well, there are so many lunatics out there – and on both sides of the fence – I would feel completely responsible if any harm came to anyone over my raising certain questions – putting those questions into people’s minds who hadn’t thought about it. I mean, if police or doctors, or even those people closer to the inner sanctum of Sarah Palin’s world wanted to go forward, then it would be okay I guess but out here – I would be concerned for people’s safety and welfare.

And then you realize – one day Trig will be old enough to read all this stuff said about the person he grows up to know as his mother. Think about what happens to him then?

I have thought about it. I grew up in a family, in an era where bad things were hidden in closets and no one was ever allowed to speak of them. It’s a crap way to live. Nothing good ever comes from secrets and inevitably, there’s a flood or a fire or a nosey real estate agent and someone does show up to clean out the closet whether you want them to or not.

Gryphen, over at The Immoral Minority is, as you read this, leading a cleaning crew straight for Sarah Palin’s closet door. With the help of some qualified advisors, and other hard-working bloggers, Gryphen is about to smash through that “Keep Out” sign and march the truth about little Trig right out into the daylight.

And I proudly stand with all the other bloggers (see list on right) who are watching his back.

Gryphen’s Tale Pt 1

Gryphen’s Tale Pt 2

Sarah Palin perpetrated a hoax on the American people during the 2008 Presidential campaign, claiming to have given birth to a Down’s Syndrome baby. She continues to perpetrate this hoax even now. She deserves to be held accountable. America needs her to be held accountable.

The infant known as Trig Palin needs her to be held accountable.

==================
Footnote:

This is completely off the top of my head but… in chatting with the commenters below, it AGAIN struck me as odd that Sarah Palin’s parents were the ones to present the governor’s new baby to the world without even a sibling or the dad present.But this time, as I’m reading and replying to comments, the penny has dropped that they are in a hospital ‘corridor’. As many times as I’ve typed “hospital corridor/hallway” in my posts regarding this issue, it’s only now just come into my line of sight that wait a minute – why a hallway? Without any activity going on around them, they might just as well have walked into the hospital off the street – met with ADN reporters then got into their car and drove off immediately after the interview.

How about it ADN? How’d that interview take place? Did any of your crew actually see Sarah or Todd? The delivering doctor? Were they even in the maternity ward? How about on the same floor as the maternity ward?  Where’s the busy background? The nurses? The nice lady with the teacart? If Sarah was too tired to present her baby to the press, why didn’t they just take a statement from Todd and come back after she’d had some sleep? The first-ever Alaska governor to give birth in office and she lets somebody else stand in for the photos?

Could it be that none of the Palins were actually ‘admitted as patients into maternity’ that day? Could this have been just another Palin-staged photo-op?
==================

To comment on this post, please scroll up to the title: Trig Palin: For a little guy, you sure make a lot of big waves and click on the word comments just beneath. Thanks, OzMud

 

It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child (Part 2)

(Part 1 can be read here.)

The breaking story of Andrea Friedman defending herself against the FB attack by Sarah Palin and follow up by noting Sarah Palin’s inability to take a joke, recognize the correct subject of a joke, and rebuff the claim of Sarah being spokesperson for all physically and/or mentally challenged people everywhere can be read in detail on The Immoral Minority and on Palingates.

In a nutshell, Andrea likens Sarah’s carting her son around on the campaign/book-signing trails to carrying him around like a loaf of French bread, clarifying her parents would never have done this to her. Andrea had loving, committed parents who provided her with hands-on, quality care and guidance.

Most parents of special needs kids instinctively enjoy that common ground; putting their child’s needs first. As a matter of fact, raising a special needs kid actually increases the instance of divorce among special needs parents because one or the other can dive so deep into commitment of care, they stop tending to the needs of their marriage.  Inevitably, this pushes the neglected spouse out the door.

But when parents can work together, becoming their own support system and balancing the care of their special needs child with other, familial and personal needs, it’s magic. And the resulting, well-nourished, well-rounded, intelligent child shows it.

Andrea Friedman is a finished-product of such magic. She is a lovely human being. She’s well-mannered, educated, poised, talented and warm. She’s independent, drives a car, works and manages her own income. On the subject of special needs, while Sarah can only give lip service, Andrea can actually speak. And she does. She travels the US guest-lecturing at fundraising events aimed at educating the general public about and raising funds for Down’s Syndrome charities. She does it for love of the cause, not media attention.

Some of Sarah’s supporters (comments can be read here – scroll down to update #3) have begun negating Andrea’s letter to the editor, inferring anyone with DS could not possibly have written the email received and published by Huffington Post in Andrea’s name. Why? It was coherent. It was legible. It was thoughtful.

It does my head in to realize there are still such ignorant people out there – adults who believe all mentally challenged people are blithering idiots. Well to be fair, I suppose when your idol is the Word Salad Czar it would be difficult to digest the possibility of anyone less genetically-endowed to be more eloquent, gracious or morally superior.

It takes a whole village to raise a child. But whether the child is a special needs kid or just a kid, that village needs to include full-time parents. Parents who play a key role in the nurturing process, not ones who just make guest appearances when the cameras are rolling.

I had another thought. But the microwave dinged and as I ran to the kitchen to retrieve my cuppa, in frantic effort to silence the annoying sound, the thought fell out of my head and now I can’t seem to find it anywhere.

Keep an eye out will you? And if you happen to spot my errant thought please leave a comment telling me where to look . (Stop laughing. Someday you’ll be this old too!)

To comment on this post, please scroll up to the title: It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child (Part 2) and click the word comments just beneath. Thanks, OzMud

 

 

Support Free Press: Boycott Harper Collins

Dear Harper Collins Publishing House,

What a disgraceful display of censorship. Having selected media banned from a  book signing, (Going Rogue, Sarah Palin, 22 Dec 2009,  Wasilla Alaska), an event listed and promoted by your company as a public event, was at the very least a shameful act of cowardice, unbefitting a business dependent upon a citizen’s right to freedom of speech. 

The local Alaskan media banned from this event had  every right to attend, to report, to ask questions of your author, and to get their copies of her book signed. None had reputations or past histories of creating public disturbances. They were neither armed nor posed any form of threat to your author. To ban certain media ahead of an event based solely on the premise they ‘might’ ask the hard questions or ‘might’ write an unfavorable review only shows how ill-deserved your client is of the fame you proffer her.

I am so appalled by your role in this anti-American act of media censorship I will never again purchase another book with the name Harper Collins on the jacket.

You’ve lost a long-time customer. 

Respectfully,
Lynn ….

In light of how Gryphen, Dennis Zaki and Shannyn Moore were banned from the public book signing in Wasilla yesterday, I have just emailed the above letter to each of the addresses below.

I’m also urging all of my family and friends to cease purchasing any and all Harper Collins products and hoping you will all do the same.

United States of America
HarperCollins US
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
United States of America
Tel: 1 212 207-7000
orders@harpercollins.com
www.harpercollins.com

Australia Office
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble NSW 2073
Australia
Tel: 02 9952 5000
Fax: 02 9952 5555
feedback@harpercollins.com.au

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

United Kingdom
HarperCollins UK
HarperCollinsPublishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith
London
W6 8JB
United Kingdom
enquiries@harpercollins.co.uk
www.harpercollins.co.uk

New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers New Zealand
31 View Road,
Glenfield, Auckland
New Zealand
Tel: 64 9 443 9400
Fax: 64 9 443 9403
customer.services@harpercollins.co.nz
www.harpercollins.co.nz

 

Does this bother anyone else or… *reactions-2*

 

Speaking for myself  – I did not take denaliorbust’s comment in the previous post as a pass on Sarah’s not being responsible for her actions – but more as a clinical explanation of events which shaped her political personality. A disecting, forensic approach, if you will, to the question we all want answered – how did Sarah get to be  Sarah?

We’ve all of us been left to head-shaking and guesswork regarding Sarah’s qualifications because no one in her world will talk to us, and the people in a position to garner information for us – just don’t. We’re flatout.

But our questions are honest ones, appropriately asked of a person positioning herself to be a major political figure in our lives. (Anyone proferring foreign policy advice via newspaper Op-Ed and  Facebook edicts to a seated president surely considers themselves a contender, right?)

Early in the 2008 McCain campaign, when Katie Couric was (by Sarah and her staff) summarily dismissed as an out-of-line reporter who asked invasive, ridiculous questions, it was like waiting for the other shoe to drop… but it never did. Where were Katie’s backers? Where were the stationheads and television crews? Why weren’t a hundred other journalists jumping up and down screaming WAIT! STOP SIDESTEPPING AND ANSWER THE DAMNED QUESTIONS LADY!

Nothing. We got nothing. At the time a handful of Alaskans were bravely and quietly stepping out of the shadows and into the blogs, ready to take up the banner our public officials and paid journalists so carelessly dropped, only to be met with serious obstacles. Alaska bloggers like Gryphen at The Immoral Minority and AKM at The Mudflats were both outted and threatened.  Wasillans like Andree Mccleod and Linda Kellen Biegel vigilantly trekked the legal roads demanding disclosure of Sarah’s actions as governor while under constant verbal attack from an army of Palinbot soldiers.  There’s Phillip Munger who began pecking at the conscience of the Alaska newspapers to give in and do their jobs and Shannyn Moore, who used her blog, radio and television to question the authority of Sarah Palin, smalltown mayor and accidentally-elected-governor only to be fired, threatened and persecuted by Palins followers.

Each of them has suffered public confrontation, personal and monetary hardship as a result of their efforts and yet they each still persist on getting at the truth and getting that truth to us. But it’s slow because those who know won’t talk. Those who talk, won’t give their permission to release.

So here we sit, out in the blogosphere, watching Sarah Palin take root in our future while we beg crumbs from anyone, anyone at all who can give us the tiniest insight into this woman who keeps pushing herself into power whether the majority of the public want her there or not. A woman with such hubris she publicly instructs your president, my president, a Nobel Prize winning, educated, eloquent man – how do to his job.

anurse: I don’t know if Sarah is just a person with such a low IQ she was susceptible to those who suggested a political career was her destined future,  if she was the mean-spirited high school bully who has gathered a cult-like following and is using them to manipulate her way into the White House, or if she actually believes she is the new messiah, here to save us all from eternal damnation.

But I can tell you I want to know the truth. If Tiger Woods, who does nothing more than play a good game of golf for a living is held up to the standard of full international disclosure of his personal life, than certainly we can expect nothing less of Sarah Palin, smalltime pollie from the bush.

And while we’re at it… can anyone please tell me why a woman who holds a four-year degree in Journalism needed a ghost writer to produce a fluff-piece about herself?

I mean it was just a big essay. Not rocket science.

 

Sarah’s Train to Nowhere Derails in Wasilla

 

By making the false claim that her and husband Todd’s portion of the monetary costs of defending her governorship against the (now known as) frivilous ethics violations complaints filed against her by Alaska citizens, Sarah Palin has inadvertantly slapped the faces of those supporters who’ve rushed to her financial rescue.

Those people who volunteer their services to collect public money to help fund putting Gov Palin in the White House, and specifically those professionals who have donated their time and expertise to organize SarahPac and the Alaska Fund Trust had all their collective efforts derailed by one five-minute speech given on the third of July on the governor’s back lawn in Wasilla Alaska.

Five days later, amid the public’s chaotic quest to make sense of Sarah’s decision to relinquish her gubernatorial duties mid-term, little truths by reputable people were beginning to rise over the din. Take this quote from AKMuckraker over at The Mudflats for instance:

David Murrow, a spokesperson for the Governor, said in an interview that much of this money was budgeted to the lawyers in advance and would have gone to them anyway, even if state lawyers hadn’t been defending against these ethics complaints.

This completely negates Sarah’s claim that money spent on answering the ethics violations complaints could have been put to better use (roads, education, etc.) because the attorneys and staffers who actually worked on the complaints were already on payroll to do so and nothing extra was required. Answering these complaints was already in the Alaska Law Dept. job description.

Then comes this Alaska radio talk show clip posted by Phillip Munger at Progressive Alaska in which Michael Carey, columnist for Anchorage Daily News tells well-known Alaska journalist Terry Gross:

“…I spoke to a a legislator today (a former member of the Attorney General’s office) and he explained that many of the ethics complaints could have been answered simply by writing a letter back to those who handle ethics matters… and say… this is actually what I did and respond to the complaint in that fashion without requiring any high-price legal help.”

So now we hear from legal sources in the know that the entire manner in which Sarah responded to the ethics violations complaints, the infamous “waste of state time and resources” defense was her own doing and completely unnecessary.

Six days later, in an interview by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, it seems the very man who put the Alaska Fund Trust together for Gov Palin to protect her from financial ruin has commented on the truth of how much money the Palins have actually been responsible for and it’s not even close to the thousands upon thousands of dollars she claimed in her speeches and interviews between 03 July and 09 July. It’s actually closer to zero.

According to Margaret Carlson of The Week magazine and Bloomberg News and reported on by Gryphen at The Immoral Minority:
 
John Coale, who set up Sarah’s Legal Defense Fund (and apparently runs SarahPac), told Carlson that THEY (the Alaska Fund Trust) reimbursed the state for the children’s travel expenses and paid her legal bills for the other ethics charges. In other words Sarah Palin has paid NO out of pocket money due to these charges!

To further wear on Palin supporters, the media has tagged SarahPac – SarahPac of Lies.

A lot of people across the USA were smitten by Sarah’s seemingly down-to-earth, on-the-side-of-the-average-Joe’s personality. But looks can be deceiving and unfortunately, history has proven time and again that not all charismatic people are worthy of the loyalty they inspire.
 
Sarah’s Train to Nowhere isn’t just coming off the tracks. It’s headed for the edge of a steep cliff at subatomic speeds and – considering the people who climbed onboard – it’s taking the careers of some of her most loyal supporters with it.

To comment on this post please scroll back to the title: Sarah’s Train to Nowhere Derails in Wasilla and click the word comments  – Thanks, OzMud

 

Dear Gryphen, About Tim Tams

The original Tim Tam is a chocolate bikkie, covered in chocolate, filled with chocolate cream. It’s touted as Australia’s favourite chocolate biscuit, selling on average 400 million packets per year in a country whose population is just over 21 million.

The name Tim Tam comes from the horse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1958. Arnott’s (pronounced are nuts) has been making this bikkie commercially since 1964. The recipes for the chocolate itself, the bikkie base and cream fillings are family-owned.

To quote Arnott’s:
The chocolate used to make Tim Tam biscuits has been specially developed by Arnott’s to give a slightly caramel taste. The cream flavour is a delicate mixture of vanilla, butter and chocolate that complements the biscuit base and the chocolate. It’s this unique cream which sets Tim Tam apart from any other chocolate biscuit.”

They are to die for. The chocolate coating, filling and bikkie somehow manage to melt on your tongue in one synchronized moment of breath-taking ecstasy you want to never end.

You never forget your first Tim Tam. I was in a shop queue with my (now) spouse. Packets of these bikkies were in stacks the length of the queue. I remember spouse smiling, taking a packet from a stack, opening it and saying “here – try this” As I bit through the creamy chocolate into the fluffy biscuit the flavours exploded in my mouth like fireworks on a hot night. I thought I would be arrested and deported right there in the queue – I didn’t care.

Mark my words: Wars will be fought over this bikkie one day.

These are the current flavours:

Tim Tam Original
Tim Tam Chewy Caramel
Tim Tam Double Coat
Tim Tam Classic Dark Chocolate
Tim Tam Love Potions Double Chocolate and Raspberry
Tim Tam Love Potions Chocolate Mud
Tim Tam Love Potions Sticky Vanilla Toffee
Tim Tam Latte
Tim Tam Mocha, Double Coat
Tim Tam Chilli Chocolate

On the other hand, Australia sadly lacks See’s Candies and I have been without Chocolate Bordeaux’s for over ten years now… if not for Tim Tam’s and Pavlova, I would never have survived

OzMud
aka Lynn-in-Australia

PS Gryphen writes The Immoral Minority here