The Barracuda Lets Go

Considering how recent this is and how little we actually know, you've certainly done a lot of legwork to get some kind of story. Nice job.....

She got a big assist from KT and MS and Mark got a hand in there as well. Nevertheless it spells out that Sarah Palin left a lot more questions than answers today.

Whoa, Phyllis Schlafly is still out there? Crazy.

best guess is that Palin has been offered a high profile gig at FauxNews...

Why Sarah Palin Quit: how about a question mark on that header. Not to be picky but this is a re-hash of what was said by people who knew little about the reasons behind the announcement. The silliest remark of the evening : by Andrea Mitchell. Pluk: I think Faux News must be salivating.

Mudflats.com said in its original post that there have been rumors of something really big coming at SP, and then reported the following from another blog:
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Okay, I've now been able to get independent information from multiple sources that all of this precedes what are said to be possible federal indictments against Palin, concerning an embezzlement scandal related to the building of Palin's house and the Wasilla Sports Complex built during her tenure. Both structures, it is said, feature the “same windows, same wood, same products.” Federal investigators have been looking into this for some time, and indictments could be imminent, according to the Alaska sources. From Brad Blog
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God knows she doesn't need to have any more rumors come at her, and I do not wish her ill. It has been in the Alaska news since the nomination that there might have been "friend" issues in the construction of her home, as there was for Ted Stevens. This would let her bow out and not have to answer to the press (or her constituents) if this story heats up.

Ah, I see James LA already got the the indictment rumors on the last thread, which I hadn't finished reading before I posted.

 
The most horrifying evidence against her, I think, is her handwriting. I would have thought a twelve-year-old wrote that.
 

I just picture Ozzy singing Crazy Train in the background as Palin engages in more word salad.
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She is genuinely a few eggs short of a dozen.

JNS: Don't use "laid" and "Mark Sanford" in the same sentence. Some of us aren't mature enough to resist.

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Now the Washington Post can join the ranks of those happy that new shiny thing™ has cast shade over their shame.
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It has been a truly preposterous week, ittdgy.
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If you are a Republican...

Republican Central to Sanford: follow soon to be former Gov Palin's example.

I cut the grass yesterday. The flowers are in full bloom. The fireworks are set to go off tonight...AND it's Christmas? If you're a democrat you might be thinking of the title of an old album by The Who. Who's Next.

I watched the press conference a couple of times.
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To put it kindly, it was 20 minutes of bizarreness, rambling, pettiness, defensiveness and contradictory statements. I came away with the thought that she thinks she was a victim of the media, the federal government, her own state government, her own term in office and other lame duck governors. And none of these things were her own doing. She is helpless in the face of all this so she has no choice but to resign from a position where she could actually make a difference and work from a position where she can claim all the problems are other people's fault.
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If you honestly look back at Sarah's rise in politics she has consistently made the right friends to get her foot in the door and immediately turned around and made those same friends enemies after she had obtained what she wanted and often for no apparent reason. The main difference between then and the last election is despite of all her pettiness she still won in the past. That didn't happen this time and now she seems to be lashing out.
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How anyone watching her yesterday and seeing something in her that they admire, they can count on or look up too is beyond me. Unless of course they also feel the entire world is conspiring to personally destroy them too. And none of its is their fault.

This is a list of accomplishments the Palin administration put out.
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Selected Accomplishments of the Palin Administration
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General
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· Transferred more control of public issues to the local level
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Natural Resources
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· Created the Petroleum Systems Integrity Office to oversee responsible development

· Held the line for Alaskans on Point Thomson that encouraged drilling

· Restructured the state's oil taxes to create a clear and equitable valuation formula for our oil and gas

· Initiated and implemented the largest energy project in the world through the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act

· Removed government from the dairy business and put it back into private-sector hands
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Ethics
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· Ushered in ethics reform

· Cleaned up previously accepted unethical actions affecting development
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Fiscal Notes
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· Slowed the rate of government growth

· Worked with the Legislature to place billions of dollars in savings

· Vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars in capital budget line items

· Reduced Alaska's dependence on federal earmarks by nearly 85%

· Eliminated state-funded personal luxuries like the jet, the chef, and junkets

· Refused a pay raise, along with the Lieutenant Governor
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Education
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· Provided unprecedented support for education initiatives
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Public Safety
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· Filled long-vacant public safety positions over the last year
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Corrections
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· Broke ground on the new state prison
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Fish and Game
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· Maintained biologically-sound wildlife management for abundance
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Environment
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· Established first sub-Cabinet on climate change
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Legal
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· State's rights protected in two recent victories handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court
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http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/07/03/palin-announces-her-resignation/

Can she pat herself on the back and kick her own ass at the same time?

What does Miss Lindsey Graham have to say about it?

It's time to put the republican party on a suicide watch. I'm not saying we should stop them, just watch.

can we take pictures?

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I'm not saying we should stop them, just watch time them.
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Correction
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· Broke wind at the new state prison

As usual, JNS, you got a key thing wrong because you're too lazy to check. Palin's speech was not "unscripted." The prepared text was up on the governor's Web site long before it could have been transcribed, and her actual remarks veered from it constantly in mostly minor phrasing changes but followed the points sentence by sentence.

It's actually a better, more interesting story that this endless, rambling statement was planned and written out in advance, not made up on the spot. But as usual, you go for the easier storyline, turning your assumption into a flat statement of fact. An actual professional reporter would at least have said "apparently unscripted" if they didn't have the complete integrity to make a quick check.

The problem is that when you are so easily repeatedly caught by the averge reader on things like this, it makes the rest of your reporting untrustworthy. What else did you blithely say in this story without actually knowing what you were talking about?

Palin said the ethics complaints have cost the state of Alaska millions of dollars.
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From Transcript.
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Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We've won! But it hasn't been cheap - the State has wasted THOUSANDS of hours of YOUR time and shelled out some two million of YOUR dollars to respond to “opposition research” – that's money NOT going to fund teachers or troopers – or safer roads. And this political absurdity, the “politics of personal destruction” …
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http://community.adn.com/adn/node/142176
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Fact: Ethics investigations cost state $296,000
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FEES: Troopergate cost almost two-thirds of the total.
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http://www.adn.com/palin/story/850854.html

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I think net net this is probably a great decision by Palin. Granted, she's all but proven that she's not qualified to run her state, that she's not to be trusted to meet her responsibilities, that she considers her Oath of Office a joke, her donors dupes, public office merely a stepping stone in her own self-aggrandizement, and by today's incoherent ramble which reinforces her many other moments of unscripted blather during the campaign, that her brain canters as smoothly as a three-legged dog.
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So what?
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40% of the Republican party adore her. The same 40% who think that BHO's a Christian separatist Muslim who had Bill Ayers write his biography, that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian who had an affair with Vince Foster just before murdering him and forging his suicide note, and that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a dinosaur. These 40% don't care what she does. She could've bitten the head off a chicken on the podium today and they'd love her even more because she's regular folks, just like us.
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And they're right: in many many ways she is the perfect emblem, the standard bearer, the Jeanne D'Arc of what the Republican Party has become. If, 30 years ago - as Reagan's handlers led the party down a road paved with ignorance, deceit, incompetence, jingoism, racism, and egocentricity - you could've imagined the logical terminus off in the hazy future, she's it -- The End Of The Road.
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So: she's prob going to take a job w/ Fox or make speeches to the faithful every day at $250K per, bankrolled by the usual suspects, the depraved spawn of the first Gilded Age, as over-the-limit campaign donations disguised as speaking fees, and in one year she's going to earn $50+ million, so much that the First Dude can buy a platinum snowmobile and her probable scores of illegitimate great-grandchildren will never have to work for a living.
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Not bad for a hick from nowhere who spent more time getting thru college than Bluto Blutarsky.
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Then, around 16 months from now when she announces for Pres, she'll have a personal war chest to tap as well as the abovementioned 40% loonies, who've been lighting votive candles and hoarding ammunition in fervent hope of this day, and it'll be nearly impossible for a Romney or Huckabee or Pawlenty or whomever to keep her from scrounging up that last 11% she needs for the nomination, and once she does the rest of the Republemmings will fall in line, as they always do, declaring her the reincarnation of Einstein, Churchill & Pericles.
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So, like I said, this decision makes a lot of sense for her.
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And besides, it's just so (wink) mavericky!