I really don’t see what other options the military has here:

Sarah Palin kicked off her book tour in Michigan this week, and thousands gathered outside a Barnes & Noble chanting her name, giving the event the feel of a political pep rally. The Army wants Palin’s appearance at Fort Bragg on Monday to be much quieter.

The base has asked Palin not to make a speech at a public book-signing at the base exchange; she also will not write personal notes, pose for photographs or sign anything besides her new memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

Fort Bragg also wanted to bar reporters from the event. Garrison Commander Col. Stephen J. Sicinski determined that by keeping out the media, the base would prevent Palin, a Republican and possible candidate in 2012, from having a platform from which to attack President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

“Fort Bragg, nor any other Army installation, cannot be used or appear to be used as endorsing criticism of the commander in chief,” said base spokesman Thomas D. McCollum. “Because this book signing is turning into a political platform with the addition of media coverage, we are restricting the media coverage.”

They really don’t have much choice in this matter.

The wit and wisdom of bible spice:

“He’s not lying, in the sense that those two words will not be found in any of those thousands of pages of the different variations of the health care bill…No, death panel isn’t there. But he’s incorrect. It’s kind of what Reagan used to do though when he used to talk about, say, the Evil Empire. You’re never going to find ‘The Evil Empire’ on a map of the world. He talked about that in terms that people could understand.”

Actually, yes you could find the Soviet Union on the map. In fact, you can allegedly see the remnants from your goddamned house. I think I need a drink.

This is the most exasperatingly stupid woman on the planet.

*** Update ***

Word.

Using my amazing powers of predicting things that a particle board desk could see coming, I expect Sarah Palin to blame the lies in her book on her ghostwriter. Points will also be awarded for the book editor, fact-checking team (I honestly want to know who served on that chain gang) and her moron-to-English translator.

Ambinder has some campaign emails that make it pretty clear that Palin was a complete and total PITA the entire campaign. Anything the woman is involved in leads to pure chaos.

And about her assertion in the book that she wanted to do more interviews but the McCain team wouldn’t let her, well, there is this email:

Nothing a little shopping at Saks couldn’t overcome, I’m sure.

Heckuva job, John McCain.

This is great. Red State “interviews” Sarah Palin, although I’m not really sure you could call this an interview, because there are no real quotes, and it turns out she has been doing some book learning:

One of the criticisms leveled by the right when Palin was chosen as McCain’s nominee is that she had not shown she’d done the reading to lead, i.e. read the Hayek, Friedman, Goldwater, Bastiat, to form her thoughts. She admitted she is a gut level conservative, but also said that criticism comes mostly from “shallow people who have not delved into [her] record.”

I did not want to sound like Katie Couric and ask what she’s read, but I broached the subject and she went right into mentioning Thomas Sowell and Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. She said she has read some of the foundational stuff, but she sees no need to focus on the old writings. She likes “the modern stuff too.” Her preference is policy and application, focusing on writers who are not just following up on foundational conservative ideas, but applying those ideas too.

I can’t believe 25% of the country thinks this woman could be President.

BTW- does the Bible count as an “old writing?”

I got your latest poseur alert, right here. Here is Matt Continetti, who apparently drew the short straw at the Weekly Standard and was given the job of rehabilitating Sarah Palin’s image, writing in the WaPo. This is a gem:

Like a lot of people, as soon as I got my copy of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue,” I immediately thought of the German literary critic Hans Robert Jauss.

Why, yes. I bet the majority of the folks who buy Sarah Palin’s book immediately think of Hans Robert Jauss.

This Palin book is going to be THE… GREATEST… THING… EVAH:

One of the whackiest claims Sarah Palin makes in her new book is that she agreed to her disastrous interview with Katie Couric — a central event during Campaign 2008 — because a top McCain aide told her Couric had low self esteem, leading Palin to take pity on the CBS anchor.

A McCain adviser I just spoke to adamantly denied the claim, and provided a counter story: Palin was repeatedly urged by McCain aides to prepare for the interview, but refused.

Palin claims in her new book that she agreed to sit down with Couric partly because she felt sorry for her, after senior McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace told her that Couric suffered from self-esteem problems. It’s understandable that Palin would try to deflect blame for the interview: It was a disaster that hastened her unmasking as unqualified for the presidency.

“It’s not true,” the McCain adviser I just reached said, laughing heartily at the claim. “It’s ridiculous.”

I’m positively fucking dying for Mark Halperin’s take on this, because this is devastating news for the Obama campaign.

(via)

Without google, who are AC Wharton and John Peyton?

Answer: The mayors of Memphis and Jacksonville, respectively, both of whom govern cities with population sizes comparable to Alaska. I’m betting 99% of you have never heard of them.

So why are we going to spend the next few weeks listening to the lies of a grifter from up north who couldn’t even finish her term?

An earned day of rest and celebration for teabaggers, who claimed their first political scalp today.

In a huge development in the NY-23 special election, Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava has announced that she is suspending her campaign, citing an inability to win in light of recent polls and a lack of money—leaving this race as a vote between Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and a strong message that the Republican Party can no longer nominate moderate candidates, or else face a right-wing revolt.

Think that this one taste of blood will satisfy the birthers, supremacists and Christianist extremists who fuel the teabagging movement? Wingnut, my friends, has not yet begun to peak.

Before moving on to something else, take a moment to sympathize with coalition builders like Newt and David Frum, no doubt tearing their hair out at the runaway success of Sarah Starbursts’ insurgent crusade.

Looks like the members of the Iowa GOP are a little dimwitted:

A conservative Iowa group’s effort to lure Sarah Palin to its banquet next month has had an unintended effect: Rather than exciting conservatives about the prospect of a visit from the former Alaska governor, the group’s plan to raise a six-figure sum to bring her to the state has GOP activists recoiling at the thought of paying to land a politician’s speaking appearance.

The Iowa Family Policy Center’s effort to cobble together $100,000 for Palin would represent a striking departure from customary practice in the first-in-the-nation state, these Republicans say, noting that a generation of White House hopefuls has paid their own way to boost their party and presidential ambitions.

Umm, guys? SHE’S. A. GRIFTER. She quit her damned job to go on the wingnut welfare circuit. Seven in ten people think she is unqualified to be President. She’s just in this for the money, and she is currently having a public feud with the father of her teenage daughter’s child who is himself cashing in by posing for Playgirl.

This isn’t a credible politician. It’s a Jerry Springer episode.

George George Will has a crush:

The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life and started supporting tax increases, so that morning Michele Bachmann had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask the incumbent a few pointed questions. There, on the spur of the moment, some similarly disgruntled conservatives suggested that she unseat him. After she made a five-minute speech “on freedom,” the caucus emphatically endorsed her, and she handily won the subsequent primary.

If I were George WIll, I probably wouldn’t use the phrase “petite pistol” in a column like this.

So not kidding.

Discuss.

***Update***

This seems like a good time to add a new tag but an old phrase for the blog: malkinfreude. Also added to the lexicon. Killed the lexicon; see above.

The actual author of Palin’s new wingnut buckraker:

Sarah Palin’s most consequential choice since leaving the Alaska governor’s mansion may be her co-author – a staunch conservative, devoted evangelical Christian, and intensely partisan Republican from far, far outside the Beltway.

Lynn Vincent spent the summer working with Palin on a closely-guarded 400 page memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” The book is due out from HarperCollins Nov. 17 – but it shot to the top of the Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble bestseller lists Wednesday as word of its publication spread.

Vincent’s past projects include co-writing the memoir of General William Boykin, who blasted the media and President George W. Bush alike for ending his career over his casting the war on terror in overtly religious terms. Her most political book, “Donkey Cons,” describes the Democratic Party since its inception as “pro-gangster” and the “party of treason and subversion.” Her work for World Magazine, where she was an editor, includes a description of President Barack Obama as the “minority survivor” of the “black genocide” – that is, abortion.

This is going to be funny as hell. I can’t wait to check this out of the library- because I’ll be damned if I give the Wasilla Wingnut a penny.

I’m personally looking forward to the chapter on how to cook meth in a snowstorm using only a Bowie knife, a King James Bible, and a moose antler. Should be awesome.

Aww, shucks:

Palin’s bookers are said to be asking for $100,000 per speech, but an industry expert tells Page Six: “The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot.”

Maybe she, Carrie Prejean, and Joe the Plumber can go as a panel? Dan Quayle can emcee.