JOE McGINNISS

Reporting on the no-shows at tonight’s Fox News GOP debate in South Carolina, Michael D. Shear writes that Sarah “has all the name recognition she needs, and money will be no problem once she throws the switch.” (emphasis added.)

Note: he said once she does, not if she does.

Shear also writes that “aides suggest she may wait till late summer before officially jumping in.”

Obviously, until someone declares a candidacy the fact of it is not a mathematical certainty. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a strong probability.

Sure, Sarah has faded badly since her disastrous post-Tuscon video. But it’s naive to think that she won’t rally at some point.

Take a look at stock market charts: a market can be in decline, even approaching free-fall, for months. Then for a combination of mysterious reasons–or in reaction to a totally unexpected event–it can turn on a dime and start to soar.

Political careers are like markets and economic cycles: they don’t go in the same direction forever.

Writing Sarah off at this point is wishful thinking.

As I’ve said: what’s yesterday’s breakfast today could be the main course tomorrow.

Here’s a tip: if you’re trading in Palin futures, buy low, sell high.

Joan Walsh at Salon wastes no time pointing out the emptiness of the head that tweeted that this afternoon.

The President quite rightly says, “We don’t trot this stuff out as trophies.”

But that’s not good enough for Sarah the Sadist. She wants proof that Navy SEALS really killed Bin Laden. Yeah, maybe Obama’s just “makin’ things up.”

For two whole days she couldn’t find anything to criticize about Obama’s leadership of this operation.

Now she has. She wants obscenely gory pictures to revel in. Choosing not to release such photos and footage must have been one of Obama’s easier recent decisions. No upside to it and it would inflame much of the Muslim world.

Sorry, Sarah: there’s an adult in the Oval Office.

But speaking of “proof”…..hmm, since you bring it up, how come you’re still “pussy-footing around” about documenting the details of Trig’s birth?

UPDATE:

Business Insider posts piece about Bin Laden compound photos spreading across the internet.

How can anyone think there is news value to publishing such photos? The dead bodies of people shot in the head at close range are, in a word, gruesome, no matter who they were, and no matter who the shooters were. Ask any homicide cop.

I link to a story about them here, which can lead you to the photos themselves, but I recommend that you not go there.
In writing four true-crime books, I’ve had to look at more crime scene and autopsy pictures than I ever wanted to. One would have been more than enough. I mention that these are now spreading virally because they are the “trophy” photos Sarah wanted President Obama to release.

Obama cannot stop these photos from spreading, but at least he had the decency and grace not to release them.

And Sarah calls that “pussy-footing?” I call it a) being humane, and b) as President, minimizing chances of retribution against American soldiers and civilians.

As several commenters have pointed out, if Sarah wants to look at photos of Muslims killed by gunfire she need only contact her young friend Jeremy Morlock.

Firedog Lake says Sarah Palin “fired” Randy Scheunemann as her “foreign policy adviser.”

With all respect to Jane Hamsher (pictured at right), the creator and curator of Firedog Lake, what’s the source for “fired”?

All I’ve seen is a Politico story in which Ben Smith quotes SarahPac treasurer Tim Crawford as saying,
“Randy flat out said, ‘We can’t give you the time.'”

Doesn’t that sound more like Scheunemann and his colleague Michael Goldfarb of Washington lobbying firm Orion Strategies
just flat out quit because they no longer fancied Sarah’s 2012 prospects?

Who says they were fired? Did anyone call Orion to ask? Did a Palin spokesman even claim that Sarah fired them?

Apparently not. But a Firedog Lake blogger using the pseudonym “Edward Teller” stated it as fact.

This is what bothers me about the whole blogging thing–not to mention twittering, which is even worse: there is no accountability. Anyone can say pretty much anything they want, with no downside. Yes, this allows for the free expression of opinion, a vital part of our democracy, but it also permits statements that purport to be fact, (i.e. “Palin Fires Scheunemann”) to be disseminated as fact–in this case, by a pseudonymous blogger–even though they lack any factual basis.

This enables Palinists to turn around and argue, with some validity, that those of us who haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid play fast and loose with the truth.

Where does accountability lie?
Should Firedog Lake require “Edward Teller” to document his claim that Sarah fired Scheunemann?
Or should the site just post whatever it deems politically correct?

*             *              *

I spent a good part of my day today wading through “Author Queries” from the production editor at Random House/Crown.
This was after two preliminary edits, an edit by my editor at Crown, an edit by a copy editor, and a legal review. Even after all that, the production editor pointed out that on page 61 I wrote that when Sarah first approached a possible campaign manager before her run for mayor of Wasilla in 1996, she said “her main goal was to build more bike paths in the city.” Yet on the next page I wrote, “Sarah focused the secular aspects of her campaign on two issues: closing hours for local bars and liberalization of Alaska’s already lenient gun laws.”

The production editor queried me: “What about the bike paths?”

That’s what editors do: ask questions, and require that inconsistencies be resolved. No published author could survive without them.  No website that depends on unpaid blog posts can afford them.

In this case, the production editor’s query caused me to make a few calls and send a few emails, in order to confirm that what I’d assumed was correct:   Sarah forgot all about bike paths once she found she had sexier issues to run on.

But the query–after hundreds of prior queries and comments about my manuscript–made me do yet another day of homework.

I don’t mean to criticize amateur bloggers, but because they aren’t getting paid–much less by a multinational publisher such as Bertelsmann/Random House/Crown–they aren’t going to have a cadre of skilled editors at their disposal.

Thus: “Sarah fired Scheunemann.”

Although there’s no evidence that she did.  And–given her freefall in recent months–there’s much circumstantial evidence to suggest that Scheunemann and Goldfarb were the rats who jumped from Sarah’s sinking ship, and that Disneyphobe Schweizer was the mouse she lured on to replace them.

My plea to bloggers of all political persuasions:  Just because you wish it were so, please don’t state it as fact without knowing that it is.

Fresh from her debacle at Colorado Christian University last night, Sarah will be in Point Clear, Alabama tonight to keynote a fundraiser for the “Exceptional Foundation of Baldwin County,” a nonprofit that helps people with mental and physical handicaps.

It’s unclear how much Sarah is charging the nonprofit for her appearance, but given an opportunity to say she was not charging the group, one of the organizers declined to do so, saying only that he “would not disclose costs for the event.”

But what is clear is that Point Clear residents won’t exactly be flocking to the local Marriott to hear the speech. “We don’t have quite the crowd we might have hoped for,” an organizer said, adding that tickets were still available, even as of this afternoon.

Tomorrow’s headline? “A Fallen Star Flopped in Alabama Last Night”