Going Really Rogue.

Omigawd. It looks like the Republicans, the GOP, have a real rogue on their hands.

And he's the party chairman.

Republican congressional leaders say they did not know that their party chairman, Michael S. Steele, was publishing a book until it was released this week, and they had no input in drafting what Steele is promoting as the blueprint Republicans should follow to win back power.

The release of Steele's book, "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda," surprised Republican congressional leaders, some of whom first learned of the book by watching Steele's television appearances this week, three top GOP congressional aides said Friday. [...]

Steele's book, which has been in the works for about a year, is separate from his role as party chairman, an RNC spokesman said. Steele has hired an outside public relations firm to help him schedule his media interviews and promotional tour.
The chairman has been under fire for a series of controversial statements he has made on his book tour. Republican congressional leaders were so angered by Steele's statements - including telling Fox News Channel on Monday that he did not think the GOP could win back their congressional majorities in 2010 - that their top aides pleaded with Steele's handlers to "get him to stop."

From here.

Oh, look. It appears that teabaggers inside the GOP have received their talking points - and marching orders. More, much more here.

Who's a scaredy-cat?

One of the more amusing tropes from the Palinista camp is that the left is afraid of her. Well, looky here. Who's afraid of whom?

Gryphen reports on trying to report on $arah's* book signing event in home-town Wasilla.

There were a few calls of "Sarah, Sarah" before the line started to wind its way up the stairs to have their audience with Queen Ester of the North. I thought "We better hurry if we are going to find a good place to set up our camera."

My first hint that something may be wrong down in Who-ville was when I was asked for my ID, not once, but twice. Then as Dennis and I were about to sign in, and the lady behind the desk took our picture with a little digital camera! WTF? I have never had anybody do that before at any other event that I attended as a media representative. I wondered why there was such tight security, unaware that my question was only seconds from being answered.

Almost as soon as I had my picture taken I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I turned around and came face to face with a local police officer who quickly apologized and then informed me that I was on the "banned list".

"I am on the WHAT list?" I asked.

"The banned list sir, I am going to have to escort you off of the property. This is a private event."

Those super-scary bloggers! Banned!

BONUS: Check out Mudflat's tribute to the Ex-Governor, 12 Days of Christmas.

*I swiped that typography for $arah's name from the comments at The Immoral Minority. It seems to be very popular.

h/t Andrew Sullivan

Going Vogue.

Sheesh, it's becoming more and more challenging to beat JJ/unrepentant old hippie to the punch, when it comes to Sarah's escapades.

But we think that we've spotted and posted this fabulous spoof of Palin's Going Rogue first. We hope.

Don we now our gay apparel?

Attack of the killer tomatoes - the sequel 2

A man attempted to pelt Sarah Palin with tomatoes during a book signing at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Both messy missiles launched from a balcony missed the former vice presidential candidate but one caught Bloomington Police Commander Mark Stehik right in the puss. That got Olson busted for suspicion of assault and disorderly conduct. He also may be charged with assaulting a cop.

Two things. One, according to Liesite, all those women who detest Palin are eaten up with envy.

The guy who expressed his displeasure in the classic manner reserved for bad circus acts is clearly not a teabagger captivated with Sarah's MILF mojo.

Second, don't you find it interesting that a police commander is assigned the task of providing security for a book-signing event?

This bodes well for future Palin appearances. What will be the next fruit or vegetable that will be launched in her direction? Rotten turnips? Bruised apples? How about a few months-old slimy teabags?

Salsa update: From JJ at old unrepentant hippie: You say tomato .... I say "INCOMING!!!"

Oh noes! C.C. stirs the pot: Tomatoes ... high-powered rifles ... yeah, that's a tossup, I guess, too. And also.

Associated Press news clip here.

Does Sarah Palin have a sense of humour?

Perhaps.

Palin may simply have hired a new speechwriter. From the Christian Science Monitor:

Sarah Palin served up 11-1/2 minutes of gentle gibes aimed at Democrats, the media, the McCain campaign, and herself during an appearance at Saturday evening’s Gridiron12 dinner in Washington. ...

In a nod to the intense media interest in Palin, the Gridiron Club’s board dropped a 100 year old rule – often violated – that comments made at the dinner were off the record and could not be reported. Instead, twittering was allowed, although not during speeches or songs. Palin tweets herself and noted in her dinner remarks that she had “the Twitter thing going.” ...

On the political front, Palin said that “if the election had turned out differently, I could be the one overseeing the signing of bailout checks and Vice President Biden could be on the road selling his book “Going Rogaine.” Biden is known for many things but not a full head of hair. ...

Talking about her bus tour for her book, “Going Rogue,” she said, “the view is so much better inside the bus than under the bus.” ...

The ritual at these dinners calls for self-deprecatory humor and Palin obliged. Being at the dinner meant “at least now I can put a face to the newspapers I do read,” she said, referencing her lack of response to Katie Couric’s question about what
newspapers or magazines she liked to read.

Ummm. Did Palin mean by that she'll be able to put a name to those newspapers she claims to read? Or is she planning to connect faces to what she and her groupies - Michelle Malkin for example - allege to be a vast group of media professionals said to be actively conspiring against Palin?

Update - Ha! I suspected that someone new scripted Palin's speech since it wasn't the usual cobbled together material and improvised ramblin' Sarah is famous for. Complete sentences too. And also. Here, the reporter says that Richard Schnure was hired to write Palin's speech for the evening.

The perfect cartoon for Palin's book tour

I don't know where the exquisitely named Dodo, the permanently Palin-panty-moistened, snaffled this cartoon, but it is perfect, yes?



I guess it's true. Birds (and mammals) of an (extinct) feather flock together.

Polarize Much?

Source

Taibbi on Palin

Matt Taibbi's hilarious and scary take on Sarah Palin, WWE star.

A taste:

Sarah Palin is the Empress-Queen of the screaming-for-screaming’s sake generation. The people who dismiss her book Going Rogue as the petty, vindictive meanderings of a preening paranoiac with the IQ of a celery stalk completely miss the book’s significance, because in some ways it’s really a revolutionary and innovative piece of literature.

Palin — and there’s just no way to deny this — is a supremely gifted politician. She has staked out, as her own personal political turf, the entire landscape of incoherent white American resentment. In this area she leaves even Rush Limbaugh in the dust.

As they say, go read the whole thing.

You're welcome.

'Going Rogue': The Index

'Going Rogue' does not have an index. Various theories as to why not were promulgated, including the notion that it was an evul ploy to make Washington insiders actually read the book rather than just check the index for references to themselves or their overlords.

Some readers here may know that I'm a book editor who also writes indexes. I think the reason for omitting an index was simply time. The publisher wanted speed. Including an index would have added at least two weeks to the schedule.

Nonetheless, two smarty pantses have provided their own indexes. Here's a sample from Slate:

Alaska
________autumn bouquet of, 1
________robin's egg sky of, 2
________superiority to Lower 48 of, 1-413

Who knew that indexing could be fun?

h/t Andrew Sullivan.

'Going Rogue' Goes Rogue

And, in case you didn't get the other book reference (comme moi), here's a linky.

via Joe.My.God

Natural and "man-made" disasters.

The science in 2012, the most recent disaster film directed and written by Roland Emmerich is flimsy, the plot is clichéd, the characters are wafer-thin (can't fault the actors, they do their best but how can you wring drama from lines that were telegraphed to the audience 3 scenes beforehand?), and the special effects - though spectacular - feel déjà vu, as though CGI footage was recycled from The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day.

Which leads to thoughts about other disasters threatening to destroy the planet. For example: in C.C.'s blogpost Palin 2012!: flimsy science + banal narrative + shallow characterizations + re-purposed effects = Sarah's strategy to win the White House in 2012, aka Going Rogue.

The next weeks will be bursting with various Palin-flavoured news items and fillers, ranging from knowledge-based and interesting:

When Sarah Palin burst onto the national political stage there was a lot of talk about her distinctive way of talkin', you betcha. Heck, she moved to Alaska when she was too young to speak and grew up in the small town of Wasilla, but doggone it, why did she talk like someone from the movie "Fargo"?

Three University of Wisconsin-Madison linguists tackled the conundrum in a research article to be published in the Journal of English Linguistics next month. The answer lies in something that happened in the 1930s.

to Frum-penned arch:

Palin supporters have constructed an alternative reality in which their heroine is wildly cheered by the American yeomanry, and despised only by a small coterie of sherry-drinking snobs. No contrary evidence, no matter how overwhelming and uncontradicted, can alter this view: not the collapse in Palin's support in just five weeks in 2008, not the statistical studies that show her as the only vice-presidential nominee in history to have hurt her ticket, not her rampant unpopularity with American women, not her own flinching from a second encounter with the Alaskan electorate.

and finally, the glurge.

The Palin graphic was found at this blog: Pink Sheep of the Family. There are more.

ADDED: fern hill here: I hope you don't mind, dBO, but I'm parking this very useful link on your post. It is Andrew Sullivan's The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Summary Before The Next Round. Lots of lies, lots of links.

Picky, picky, picky.

Is there anything more annoying than having one's opus magni laboris (that's a MASSIVE book, for the rubes) being picked apart by the small minds and fact checkers of the liberal media?

If there's anything worse, count on Sarah Palin to whine about it as she launches her memoirs promotion tour. As expected, most reputable news gathering organizations have been scrutinizing the details of Going Rogue because that's where the deity of your choice - or the devil - are bound to be found.

Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time. Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.

More here.

As expected, Palin uses her book to pay back those members of John McCain's campaign team who kept her on a tight leash.

Dear Sarah

I love Carl Hiassen. Go read his hilarious piece, 'Confidential response of Sarah Palin's book editor to the first draft of her upcoming memoir, ``Going Rogue'''.

A taste:

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for turning in the manuscript so quickly. I thought only Stephen King could crank out 400 pages in four months! Seriously, there's some terrific material here, and all of us at Harper Collins are thrilled to be publishing your life story.

Before we move ahead, the fact-checking department has asked me to pass along a few notes and comments that may require some revisions on your part.

1. Eric Clapton spells his last name with a C.

More significantly, his publicists tell us that you were not the inspiration for Layla, and that he doesn't recall ever having an affair with you.

Is it possible you've got him confused with another rock star?

h/t LuLu at Canadian Cynic.

Best seller? You betcha!

As CC asks in Canadian Cynic: Coming soon ... where could all those pre-publication sale orders possibly be coming from?

We at DAMMIT JANET! have some ideas regarding readers for Palin self-agrandizing opus memoirs too. And also.

How about this potential market? After all, if zygote zealots would contribute to Scott Roeder's criminal defense fund by acquiring some unique The Fetus©™ fetishists ephemera and artefacts from anti-abortion terrorists, they're bound to want to buy Sa-wah's book.

Double the rightwing batshit crazy bang for the buck!

Going Rouge?

That's not a typo in the title.

It's a trade paperback set to be published by O/R Books and it will be be released on November 17th.

Hang on - isn't the date that Sarah Palin's memoirs will be foisted upon her zealots fans? Funny you should mention that since Going Rouge will be a collection of essays about Palin by a number of contributors such as Eve Ensler, Christopher Hayes, Jim Hightower, Naomi Klein, Shannyn Moore, John Nichols, Katha Pollitt, Hanna Rosin, Matt Taibbi and Patricia Williams to name but a few.

Compare and contrast the covers.

Yup, yup. And that's not all, you betcha! There will also be "The Sarah Palin Rogue Coloring & Activity Book" that is expected to come out in November too.

It should be interesting to watch which book sells the most.

Stranger Than Fiction

DAMMIT JANET! just can't stop blogging about Sarah Palin. She has to be the overall best source for rightwingnut news. It appears that former presidential hopeful John McCain is experiencing selective amnesia.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Senator McCain said: "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."

Saying he would work with her again, he said: "She still is a formidable force in the Republican Party. And I have great affection for her. Will Sarah and I - did we always agree on everything in the past? Will we in the future? No. But let’s let a thousand flowers bloom."

Right. But first those poor little flowers have to make their way out of the truckload of manure that was dumped on them, into the sunshine.

McCain said he was looking forward to reading Palin's book and in particular the chapters about her joining his presidential campaign.

Um, John? Just be grateful if Sarah the narcissist exemplaire spelled your name correctly.

Salon has the CNN interview and more, here.

Todd Quits Day Job.

No matter who spins it, the story is real. The husband of ex-governor Sarah Palin has left his job as a production operator for petroleum multinational BP.

In addition to working on the North Slope, Todd Palin is a commercial fisherman and for years has participated in the world's longest snowmobile race, the Iron Dog. As the governor's spouse, he was unofficially referred to as the "First Dude" and also took part in official duties, such as hosting a tea for former first ladies of the state.

Todd Palin earned nearly $34,472 working part-time last year for BP in Prudhoe Bay and about $51,679 in the family's commercial fishing business, according to state financial disclosures. He also had $5,600 in snowmobile race winnings and an undisclosed discount on snowmobiles from racing sponsor Arctic Cat.

Meanwhile, the Alaskan blogsite Mudflats has a different take on the choice of title for Palin's 'memoir'.

During the ethics investigation of Sarah Palin now known as “Troopergate,” that phrase became seared into the collective consciousness of Alaskans. Palin’s spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton used that word referring not to Palin, but to the former Commissioner of Public Safety Walt Monegan.

Palin had pressured Monegan to fire her ex-brother in law Trooper Mike Wooten whose nasty divorce from Palin’s sister had left bitter feelings. Monegan refused to fire him, and was subsequently dismissed by the governor, leaving the Department of Public Safety without leadership, and leaving many Alaskans with a bad taste in their mouths.

In a stinging press conference, Stapleton said that Monegan, a particularly well-liked and respected public servant, former police chief and ex-Marine had displayed “egregious rogue behavior.” Stapleton, who had been a respected news anchor before her association with Palin, suffered withering criticism from Alaskans on both sides of the political spectrum.

Alaska is a small town. Monegan was no “rogue,” everyone knew it, and the use of the term disgraced her.

What had Monegan done, according to the governor, that earned him this brand? He had planned a trip to Washington D.C. to seek funding to help combat sexual assault in a state that leads the nation in that category. Rogue, indeed.

The Iquitterod continues.

Goin' Rogue?

Which should not be confused with "going Galt".

One is the purported title of Sarah Palin's 'memoir'. The other is a threat by teabaggers, rabid neocons, rightwing religious fundamentalists and sore loser Republicans to go out to their backyards to eat worms, if I catch their drift.

"Going rogue" is what McCain insiders called Palin's behaviour in the last weeks of the 2008 presidential campaign. In the wild, elephants are said to go rogue when they separate from the herd and go off on their own, running amok and creating havoc. According to this, it's the adolescent males who are prone to going rogue; perhaps the Republicans were thinking of Mrs Jumbo, Dumbo's mother?

In any event, getting back to Palin's book:

Publication is being moved up from spring to Nov. 17 in order to catch the holiday book-buying season. The former Alaska governor has been in huge demand as a speaker, and continues to harvest a bounty of media attention.

A mammoth first printing of 1.5 million copies has been ordered — the same first run as “True Compass,” the memoir of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Palin had a deadline of Sept. 15 for her manuscript and turned it in a bit early. Copy-editing and fact-checking are now underway in a race to meet the crash publishing schedule, which has been accelerated four or five months because of the huge anticipated demand.

Should be sumtin'. Just one itsy bitsy question. Is mammoth a literary term for MASSIVE?