The Mudflats

I have not mentioned until now that each chapter begins with a quote. But this one, I have to share. It may not mean much to you if you have not already waded through the first three chapters, but here it is.

I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it.  And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.  ~ Charles Swindoll

(Aaaaahahahaha!  I love it when she starts us off with a laugh.  And we are in the middle, right now, of how Sarah Palin reacts to her life. )

Page 209

They land in Arizona.
Managed to sneak out of Alaska without being detected.

Page 210
God presents doors.

“A nice guy named Adam Brickley had started a Web site trying to rally ordinary folks to draft me for the job.” (Adam Brickley was actually a blogger in his parents basement, but notice how because he’s on her side he becomes “a nice guy with a Web site” instead of those other nasty bloggers who are the “opposition research.”)

Met McCains in February 2008 and they “really connected.” Cindy loved her kids just like other moms even though she was “elegant and beautiful.” (rich) John McCain is “full of an inspiring inner joy.”

Page 211
When McCain called her at the state fair and asked her to be his running mate she wasn’t surprised. It seemed like a comfortable natural progression. (Not for anyone ELSE!) After he asked her, she hung up and took Piper on a ride. Then called Todd and Kris Perry. How would she keep the secret from her staff? She always worked. She gave birth to Piper on a Monday and went to work on Tuesday and brought her in a car seat.

Page 212 (previously posted as a sneak peek)
“She of the Iron Uterus” did work from her hospital bed after having Trig. Didn’t miss much work for any reason. Staff would have found it “inexplicable” if she was not at work on a Thursday morning for any reason, even delivering a special needs child apparently.

McCain campaign snuck her out of AK and Todd had to confiscate teenagers’ cell phones. This was “scarier” than anything the opposition could throw at them. Went to Arizona and experienced warm air and a “star spangled sky.” In Alaska it’s either cold and dark or warm and light. So this strange land the natives call “A-ri-zo-na” was very “foreign and exotic” to her. Does that count as more foreign policy experience?

Page 213 (previoulsy posted)
Introduces her arch-nemesis Steve Schmidt and talks about him working on Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004. Kerry called for “global test” for military action. He said he was “going to shove ‘global test’ right up Kerry’s ass.” Charming.

Page 214 (previously posted)
Palin sits around the coffee table chatting deftly about her position on the war in Iraq, energy and the economy. Tells them how she reaches across the aisle and has a Lincoln-like “team of rivals” approach to governance. They already knew Bristol was pregnant even though she thought only family knew. (They must have been reading Mudflats!) She is told that nothing stays secret in a campaign. That’s OK with her because she only has one skeleton….it makes her sick to her stomach….it’s….it’s…a D in college! (I’m guessing it was in English. Call it a hunch.)

Talks about her in-depth knowledge of the middle East, being commander in chief of the Alaska national guard, Track going to Iraq, etc. If only Steve Schmidt weren’t so focused on the middle east and had focused more on the economy they might have won. It’s all his fault…

Page 215 (previously posted)
Apparently Schmidt didn’t think she knew as much as she thought she knew, because he gave her a stack of books, and DVDs to review the history of the conflict.

She is questioned about Walt Monegan and talks about “his budget problems and insubordination, his changing story.” (Has anyone noticed how unbelievably nice Walt Monegan has been to her? And she still keeps flinging the crap) Also talked about Steve Branchflower the independent investigator of the Troopergate case (who was chosen by a completely bi-partisan group in the legislature) and how he was not impartial and had worked with the “Democrat” lawmaker pushing the “ginned-up scandal.” The “Democrat lawmaker” would be Hollis French. Love that “team of rivals” reaching across the aisle with the “Democrat” party.

Page 216
She had no litmus test for abortion in her administration. Her roommate in college was gay. “To me she was still Tilly.” She opposed ‘homosexual marriage’ but so did the DemocrAT candidate so it wasn’t an issue.

And now, we find out exactly WHO was responsible for the extensive vetting process that she went through. (wink) I present Arthur B. Culvahouse, Jr. He knew it all – voting records, tax records, even transcripts of sermons that visiting pastors had preached at a church I had not attended regularly since I was a teenager. And they even knew Bristol was pregnant! “Good. They know exactly what they’re getting.”

(While they were looking up sermons from visiting pastors that went to churches that you don’t attend, did they see THIS ONE?? Just curious.)

Page 217
“I didn’t believe in the theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Or that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees…” (Wow.)

Steve Schmidt felt a little uncomfortable with this part of the discussion. Imagine that. “I had just dared to mention the C-word: creationism. But I felt I was on solid factual ground.” (Wow.)

Page 218 (previously posted)
Her dad was a science teacher, and after 18 years of science lessons at the dinner table, she still was not convinced by him or anyone else that “the earth had sprung forth conveniently stocked with the ingredients necessary to spontaneously create life.”

Page 219 (previously posted)
If anyone asked her about creationism, she wasn’t going to “parrot a politically correct line” just so people wouldn’t think she was a a fundamentalist creationist whack job who thinks the Earth is 6000 years old. Thinks evolution should be debated in the classroom. If Wm. F. Buckley can be a creationist why can’t she?

“Cathedrals of soaring red rock rising near forests of ponderosa pine.. I craved stretching my legs.”

The McCain compound didn’t feel like a rich person’s compound. It had that lived-in compound feel.

Page 220
John McCain can identify hawks in flight by genus and species.
He told her that running for Vice President would be really tough on her family. She said she knows but it’s OK because her kids have grown up with it.

Page 221
She says she’s up to the challenge. They’re everyday Americans and will appeal to voters. They know what it’s like to have to make payroll. They know “what it’s like to be on a tight budget and wonder how we’re going to pay for our own health care.” >>>SCREECHY BRAKE NOISE<<<<< (OK, remember the part about Todd being part Alaska Native? Well, guess what comes with that? Free health care. Yup. Socialist government-run health care. And it works really well. Todd gets it, Track gets it, Bristol gets it, Willow gets it, Piper gets it, and Trig gets it. Sarah gets it too, for all her pregnancies. So, let me just say:

Cindy McCain reminded her of a 1950s TV mom. Some people call her an ice queen (McCain) but she isn’t. She’s tired of being “unfairly clobbered in the press with lies” about her and her family.

Page 222
She knows just how Cindy McCain feels. After a while “some of the giddy gets knocked right out of you.”

“Because of her upmarket elegance, she’d almost been ostracized from working-class people.” But her dad was poor. And she does volunteer work and adopted a kid.

John McCain offered her the job.

Page 223
They got ready to step on stage. They whispered “Say a prayer!” to each other. John McCain made a bold pick.

Page 224
McCain introduces her to an adoring world.

Page 225
More of McCain’s introduction of her. It struck her as ironic that Obama had captured the theme of “change.” After all she’s the one who came up with it first. She wondered how she could interject that into the campaign – that she was for change “when change wasn’t cool.” (Wondering how many other political campaigns have had change as a theme. Probably every single non-incumbant. Nice try.)

Page 226
She gave the speech. Now John McCain would have some explaining to do when people asked Who in the heck is she? (And the nation asked the internet and found a bunch of Alaska bloggers!)

She got to the hotel room in Minnesota, and what do you think she found? Racks of clothes! She thought that it was great. Somebody was going to just hand her something to wear. One less thing to worry about.

Page 227
She met Tucker Eskew. He was the one who “torpedoed” John McCain’s campaign in the 2000 primary. McCain hired him hoping he could do the same thing to Obama. (Nice.) She recalls the first time she heard Obama speak and thought he was good but that his “smooth style would obscure what he was actually saying.”

Met Mark and Nicolle Wallace, married couple that worked for Bush who met during the Florida recount. (How romantic. Not.)

Page 228
Mark has a bad temper and drops the f-bomb and yells at people. Nicolle is blond, charming and pretty and is always “on.” She speaks in sound bites. She likes Randy Scheunemann and Steve Biegun. Steve’s kids play basketball. She hopes he’s not missing their games for this. He is.

Page 229
She is “reminded” that she has more foreign policy experience (Russia) and more administrative and executive experience than Obama or Biden. “We assumed it was the campaign press people’s job to get that message out to the voters.”

The VP people were called “the B Team.” Steve Schmidt (the evil) introduces her to her campaign chief of staff who has “a thick East Coast accent” (Whatever the hell THAT is! I guess to Palin with her weird Wasilla-Wisconsin hybrid thing going on, all the East Coasters sound the same). The campaign manager is a financial guy and doesn’t know how to run a campaign.

Page 230
She thought it was odd that this inexperienced guy was going to run the show. Silly her, she thought they must have known what they were doing. It ended up being a “learning experience.” (More excoriating to come, I’m sure)

A tailor showed up. She was beautiful and helpful. Nicolle hired a team of NY stylists, “one of whom had apparently worked for some big-name newscasters, including Katie Couric.” (insert scream here) She looked at the price tags and they “almost knocked her eyes out.” Why, one blazer alone cost more than a semester at the University of Alaska. And she was horrified at the “fancy” packaged $70 nylons. There was also a real pearl necklace, but she gave it back because she didn’t need fancy stuff. Why, even her wedding ring only cost $35 “and it still works!” (Even though she doesn’t wear it?)

Willow, ever the fiscal watchdog asked who was paying for all this? The staffer said she didn’t know but not to worry because it was all taken care of. Her dad showed up and they bought him a $200 tie and $350 shoes and he too was horrified and wanted to know who was paying for it, and was told the same thing.

Page 231
More with the clothes…
Why did they all have to go through the ordeal of getting new clothes. They are simple people who don’t want new clothes. Nicolle Wallace, up to her old tricks, assured her that this was all totally normal. Amy and Angela the hair and makeup girls arrive on the scene. She always did her own hair & makeup. She wasn’t trying to look chic by putting her hair up in the giant plastic clip, it was just easier. The wardrobe people wanted to take lots of time with her, and put her on a pedestal and rotate her slowly in front of the mirror and gaze at her to make sure everything fit absolutely perfectly. But she had no patience for this. She had places to go and things to do! Go go go!

Page 232
Oh, the clothes… what a collosal waste of time they were. She hated them. Who strategized this part of the campaign? She couldn’t beLIEVE how much they emphasized “packaging” and she’d never seen anything like it. They don’t have these kinds of people in Alaska that are members of this “elite and highly specialized guild.” But even though they were campaign professionals, nothing but nothing could prepare them for the deluge of lies and more lies and rumors and innuendos that would befall and how the “packaging” would taint her candidacy.

Page 233 (previously posted)
And while we’re at it, what’s up with the fancy schmantzy hotels? She’s used to the Best Western in Wasilla.  Says she wasn’t used to fancy hotel rooms (Fancy hotel room anyone?), but learned that Bristol’s pregnancy had been outed while she was brushing her teeth looking at the flat screen TV embedded in the bathroom mirror. If only she had been able to be up front about it from the start, but the McCain campaign botched it.

Repeats the lie that Barack Obama told the media to lay off his family and they “obeyed him”, but they trashed her family. In actuality, Obama had asked the media to lay off HER family.

Page 234-235 (previously posted)
There’s some mysterious entity called “headquarters” and she doesn’t know who they are, but they wrote a statement about Bristol’s pregnancy saying they were proud of her, and proud to become grandparents. She disagreed and wrote a statement that was more “serious.” The McCain campaign ran the one they wrote anyway. Schmidt tells her to stick with the script.

Page 236 (previously posted)
The McCain communications team learned that she was the VP pick the same day everyone else did so they were completely unprepared and had no idea who she was.

So when the avalanche of press inquiries tumbled in, the national media folks had zero information. What they did report, patchy factoids cobbled together from the Internet and a few left-wing Alaska bloggers was usually wrong. (Woooo! “A few left-wing Alaska bloggers” shout out!)

The national media, referred to as the “black-suited, laptop-toting flatlanders” (Flatlanders?) apparently drove around Wasilla trying to find out where Sarah Palin bought her liquor, and talked to: “a defeated former opponent” (Andrew Halcro), “a maniacal blogger” (Heck, that could be any of us, but probably Syrin), “the falafel lady” (political watchdog Andree McLeod) and “the Wasilla town crank” (presumably Anne Kilkenny).

Page 237(previously posted)
On this page, Wasilla mayoral rival the unpronounceable “John Stein” (Is that jo-hun-stee-in?) gets slammed for telling Time Magazine that Palin sought to ban books in the Wasilla Library.

“It was one lie after another – from rape kits to Bridge to Nowhere. All easy enough to disprove if the press had done its job.” (WOW! Blames the Alaska GOP and Randy Ruedrich for not correcting it. Yes, it’s her lie and she’s stickin’ with it. Fortunately it remains easy to fact check HERE and HERE.)

Slams media and bloggers for saying that if she couldn’t control her own daughter how could she be president, and saying that her philosophy about teaching abstinence was hypocritical, and didn’t work just because… it’s hypocritical and it doesn’t work.

Page 238
She would rather have abstinence only sex education taught in schools than have kids putting condoms on bananas. Contraception is OK, though. (As long as you don’t learn how to use it?)

Another “bullcrap story entered the wider media bloodstream.” Who is Trig’s real mom? The Atlantic and the Anchorage Daily News asked questions and it damaged John McCain. Trig Truthers are still at it.

They made a bid deal about a video of her in church leading a prayer that included “Also, for this country, that our national leaders are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God.” What that actually meant is that we are hoping that it’s a task from God, not that we actually think it IS a task from God. We think.

Page 239
She was so insulted by all these lies.
The media was saying that Bristol’s pregnancy might affect the election. Bristol was stressed out. They just couldn’t believe that anyone would want to talk about that. Maybe they shouldn’t watch TV.

Matthew Scully the speechwriter is a “crunchy con” who is a “bunny hugging vegan” with conservative values. He would throw himself in front of a semi truck to save a squirrel. He walked around looking at the sky a lot.

Page 240
He wrote a speech and let her help. She practiced in front of a teleprompter which she found strange. Surely you should just know your speech and not need a teleprompter. (oh, puhleez) She had only used a teleprompter a handful of times in Alaska. The rest of the time she just got up there and talked. (Yes, we know.)

She didn’t know if she was going to be able to get through the John McCain POW part without choking up. (Hey, I thought she only choked up when she was alone in a closet listening to the Star Spangled Banner with a box of tissues…)

Before she went to deliver the convention speech, she actually had to change Trig’s diaper. It kept her “grounded.”

Page 241
Transcript of speech. I’ll spare you. You heard it once already.

Page 242
The teleprompter stopped working but it was OK because she didn’t need it anyway, the silly old thing.

She delivered the line, “I guess a small-town mayor is kind of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” The crowd went wild. She used that line as a “shout out to independent minded Americans who didn’t look to government for all the answers.” (But…but… isn’t the mayor the one who’s part of the government, and the community organizer who isn’t? *head bang*)

Page 243
The other side dismissed her mayor creds. Small town service shouldn’t be scorned. It’s what makes our country great. (Like all those scorned community organizers?)

But even more important than community involvement is “a personal commitment to one’s own business (so, I guess quitting is a bad thing) and family.” (So if something is going to be hard on your family that would be bad too. Just trying to clarify.)

Then she spotted a group of hockey moms and spontaneously ad-libbed the pitbull lipstick hockey mom joke. (Right.) She was having a ball, by God’s grace and it was really liberating because the teleprompter was broken.

Page 244-245
More speech. One of John McCain’s fellow POWs was there. She only made it through the rest of the speech “with the grace of God.” She was so overwhelmed with American pride that she got choked up. The speech was over and the family argued over who was going to get to carry Trig. Piper lost but it was OK because then she got to pump her fist in the air. The kids looked great “even in a bunch of borrowed clothes.” (WHAT?!?)

She went to join McCain on stage when he accepted the nomination and her “high-heeled shoe” fell off and the media didn’t show it “bless their hearts.”

Page 246-247
Addresses Troopergate, “or as those who knew the facts called it ‘Tasergate.’” (I have to stop here for a moment. This is where the ex-brother-in-law uses his taser on the test setting on his son because the kid said he wanted to see what it felt like. Very stupid imho. But nonetheless… So, supposedly the reason that Palin dismissed Monegan had nothing at all to do with Wooten, remember? It was all that other stuff. So, why is she calling it Tasergate? They used this term briefly and then abandoned it. I thought it was because it exactly proved the point that it DID have to do with Wooten and they realized how stupid they had been. Apparently I was incorrect.)

Copies an unbylined editorial from some business magazine to “prove her point.”

Page 248
Met Jeannie Etchart, one of the trip coordinators. She was beautiful and soft-spoken. She kept borrowing her four-year old black Theory pants. (Yes, she still remembers the age and brand name of the pants)

Went to Cedar Rapids Iowa where there were “people of every color.”

Page 249-250
Met special needs teenagers on the trail. Had worried about Trig’s “imperfection” but knew it would be OK after meeting others. In Fairfax Virginia she gave a speech in the pouring rain and her makeup was running down her face but she didn’t want to leave because people had showed up to listen.

Page 251
Enjoyed bringing special needs kids into the spotlight with her. Got a bumper sticker that says “My kid has more chromosomes than your kid.”

Page 252
Big shout out to local Alaska radio personalities Bob & Mark, and Eddie Burke. Eddie Burke, described as “another great host” is pictured here:

And here he is from the back:

He’s also the guy who called the organizers of the “Alaska Women Reject Palin” rally at the local library “a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots” and gave out their phone numbers on the air so his listeners could call them up at home. He was suspended for five days. But, back to our story…

She punched up Bob & Mark on the speed dial on her cell phone and told them she had a “true American hero” sitting next to her and did they want to talk to him. Then she put John McCain on the phone for an on-the-spot interview. McCain was gracious but one of the campaign higher-ups said, “Don’t do that again.”

Gee, she guesses she went all rogue and violated some kind of “protocol.” Sheesh.

Perhaps if the campaign higher-up knew that this was the radio duo that had called State Senate President and cancer survivor Lyda Green a “bitch” and a “cancer” during an on-air chat with Sarah Palin who said nothing and just giggled, they might have thought it was a problem. You know…because then she could write about it in a book and some stupid blogger could link the stories together, and then they’d think about how she said that “associations” between people were fair game for the media. You know.

But they were all uptight and told her to knock off talking to the local hate mongering shock jocks back home.