You ever hear a news report about a bunch of people who were swindled and lost their life savings in an obvious scam? I’m talking about the people who lose their life savings to a Nigerian prince who emailed them and said if you just give me our bank account info I will put millions in it for you. Every time I hear stories like that, I feel an immediate twinge of sympathy, and then a wave of “JUST HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU?” That’s how I feel when reading this:
Peter Singleton and Michelle McCormick left their jobs, homes, and families to move to Iowa to campaign for Sarah Palin. Wednesday evening they found out they didn’t have a candidate.
The former Alaska governor’s supporters founded a group called Organize4Palin to build a grassroots network and essentially campaign for her: go to county meetings, stump for Palin with politically connected Iowans, and form a loose campaign structure for what they saw as an inevitable Palin campaign. It turned out not to be.
Sarah Palin made her decision known Wednesday releasing a statement to ABC News and telling radio host Mark Levin that she will not enter the presidential race. Wednesday evening she told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News that she “apologize(s) to those disappointed” with her decision saying that she had heard from them over the last few hours and hopes they understand “you don’t need a title to make a difference in this country.”
As the news broke that she would not run those supporters that were the most invested said they were “disappointed,” but had “no regrets.”
Clowns.
tkogrumpy
Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I do feel sorry for them
Villago Delenda Est
/violin
fasteddie9318
She doesn’t need a title. Just your money. She still needs lots of that.
Maybe, I stress MAYBE, she’ll need you to sell your organs or give your firstborn over to her for slave labor. But that’s really it.
JCT
Just remember kids, don’t play with GRIFTERS. Even if Roger Ailes tells you they are “hot” and all that.
Emma
Well, count me in on the (probably small) side of those who feel sorry for people like these. They need someone to believe in so desperately — it gives them security and a sense of purpose — that when they find him or her they will do whatever it takes to keep the high going. The saddest thing is knowing they won’t learn a damn thing from the experience.
amk
At least the nigerian prince uses persuasive words unlike screechy $arah. These mofos are made mind numbingly stupid by their bigotryand racism.
pk
You’re a bleeding heart liberal. That’s not an insult by the way.
WereBear
I feel sorry for them too, but kinda in the way you do for people who show up on the Darwin Awards website.
I’m sure they were fervent evangelicals, too. (Which I also have sympathy for… in the same way.) There aren’t very many vetted “Christian” celebrities… it’s part of Palin’s appeal that they have their very own Barbie! So to speak.
PurpleGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: No, a teeny, tiny violin.
These people are too dumb to live. They need accidents to make them contestants for a Darwin Award.
There is dumb I can sympathize with and dumb that is just too dumb to understand how the person thinks (or doesn’t as the case may be). Just what did Palin do that they think she’s even remotely qualified for a powerful position at any level of government.
tkogrumpy
Maybe it’s because I’ve been divorced three times, but seems to me when someones world comes crashing down is not the time to stick in the shiv and say “I told you so”. Maybe later.:-)
jibeaux
If you really have “no regrets” about leaving your jobs, homes, and families to work for the grifter, then no, I can’t say I feel sorry for you. Also too, your job is probably being done much better by someone else, your families are probably happier, and your home is probably greatly improved by the removal of all the angel figurines and kitten paintings.
It would be fair to say that I am not having a great week.
Linnaeus
@tkogrumpy:
Yeah, I feel much the same way.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Xin Loi motherfuckers.
Villago Delenda Est
@PurpleGirl:
If you type /violin in your chat box in World of Warcraft, you’ll get a text emote in the game:
[charactername] plays the world’s tiniest violin
If you have another player or an NPC (non player character) targeted at the time, the text changes to:
[charactername] plays the worlds tiniest violin for [target]
Rafer Janders
@Emma:
My feelings as well. I do feel sorry. People like this want to believe in something, want to matter, and I can feel their longing for meaning. If only we didn’t have a country full of grifters, con men and Republicans (but I repeat myself) ready to exploit and profit from that longing….
JGabriel
John Cole:
Me too, but in cases like this one, there’s a pretty heavy dose of schadenfreude mixed in as well. I mean, these are people whose agenda is selfish and evil, and who support policies that would take us even further down the path of destruction wrought by the last 30 years of GOP “governance”.
.
Nevgu
Speaking of dillusional clowns, how’s your campaign bandwagon started by your buddy Greenwald to get that New Mexico Libertarian Gov’t elected going? Ya know, the guy you luv because he said the whole Libyan intervention thing is bad.
As for these Palin Clowns….BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Financial Darwinism at work. Of course these clowns don’t believe in Darwin either….BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Rafer Janders: Maybe they’ll wake the fuck up. . . .nahhhhhhh.
Alex S.
No sympathy here, one needs to realize what kind of campaign they were signing up for. Palin is full of resentment, destructive, inciteful, lazy, hypocritical and shameless. What values did she represent, apart from “stick-it-to-the-liberals”?
Yutsano
This just reminded me I got a phishing e-mail supposedly from the IRS this morning. I almost felt like reporting it to stupid criminal division. Wow.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Alex S.: you left out racism
jibeaux
All right, I have enough sympathy to say this much: If someone really wanted to try to let these people know that the Great Pumpkin isn’t coming either and they don’t have to sleep in the patch for the next month, I would not physically stop them from doing so.
Cat Lady
I get the 56 year old dude’s infatuation – I’m sure he dreamed about getting with her sometime, but what explains that young woman? They should be forced to hold signs that say I AM THE 27%.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Nuther stupid fucking redneck bite the dust:
Having pulled his iconic Monday Night Football introduction song following his comments on Fox News comparing President Obama to Hitler on Monday, ESPN has announced that they are terminating their relationship with the country star permanently.
fasteddie9318
Dear Average PatrIOTIC US AmeriCAN~
permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I have the believe you are a reputable and responsible and trustworthy person I can do business with from the little information so far I gathered about you during my search for a partner and by matter of trust I must not hesitate to confide in you for this simple and sincere business.
I am SARAH PALIN 47 years of age the only daughter of late Chuck Heath whom was killed in his spirits by the villain Obama panels of death. I ran to Arizona the meth capital of us america from were I am contacting you. Before the death of my father’s spirit he told me that he has needs for a sum of US$15,000,000(Fiveteen millions united states america dollars) delivered in a satchels of leather to Alaska in my name as the next of kin,
Dear Patriot american, in the capacity of the next of kin and with all the documents in my hand now, I am contacting you with due sence of humanity that you will give it a sympathetic and mutual consideration.
I am honourably seeking your assistance in the following ways.
(1)To contribute to me this amout of 15 millions us america monies or some part of the total sums
(2)To make arrangement for me to come over to your domisile to further my knowings as to your financial accomidations and suitablity for future partnerships of remunerative nature
Moreover, I am willing to offer you 15 % of the total sum collection as compensation for your effort /input after the successful transfer of this fund to my nominated account overseas, before the investments starts.and I have maped 5% for any expenses that might be incured during the course of this transaction.
furthermore, you can indicate your option towards assisting me as I believe that this transaction would be concluded within a stipulated period of time you signify your interest to assist me.
Anticipating hearing from you immediately.
Thanks and God bless.
Best Regards.
SARAH PALIN
Certified Mutant Enemy
Clowns, indeed.
torpid bunny
Mama grizzly’s getting those fox checks now, plus lord knows how much in personal appearances. She couldn’t even finish one bus tour.
jibeaux
@fasteddie9318:
That should win a Pulitzer.
jrg
The saddest part about this story is that there is no longer any evolutionary pressure to take idiots like this out of the gene pool.
Linda Featheringill
Poor babies. I can sympathize with Sarah’s supporters.
After the election of 2008, when John Edwards crashed and burned, I had to grapple with the idea that I lean so far to the left that only liars and/or mad people would be willing to voice my beliefs. That was a painful process.
This might be the task that is ahead for the Palinistas. Except that they lean to the right.
Again, my sympathy.
Mart
@WereBear: Being atheist I overlook the obvious, but I think you nailed it, they were doing God’s work on the road to arma-get-it-on and she done pulled the plug on ’em. Makes me puddle a little.
Winston Smith
If you read the Internet’s greatest unintentional humor site, Conservatives4Palin, you see that they’ve been flogging the “Oh, she’s going to run, she’s just playing 11-dimensional-chess” claim every day for months. Literally every day they’ve had a post urging readers to send money to Sarah, and/or join Organize4Palin all on the promise that
the great pumkin will comeSarah will run.The level of delusion among Palinistas really defies belief. Palin should be deeply ashamed of taking advantage of these people’s best intentions, but we know better, don’t we?
fasteddie9318
@jibeaux: I mostly copied it from a 419 scam site and changed the details.
maya
Read the rest of the ABC article, people:
“McCormick is single, but was away from both her family and career working around the clock for Palin. She said she was excited to “jump back to my real job” as a title analyst for the oil and gas business and miss the Iowa winter.”
She got a leave of absence from her job in Texas. What’s to feel sorry for? The other dude was starting a “new career as a lawyer” in Calif. before going to Iowa.
It’s not like they sold everything, scuttled their jobs, burned their bridges, etc. So they wasted some time. Heck, we all do that everyday on BJ.
Jay in Oregon
Of course, these are the same type of wingtards that think everyone in the Democratic Party calls Obama “The One” and see him as some kind of Second Coming.
Y’know, like these guys.
Mudge
David Frum today about Palin the grifter: “The people she fooled were people who passionately wished to be fooled.”
Brandon
As someone who has been to law school and has another masters degree and should be smart enough not to get conned, I feel great sympathy for these people because I fully understand that it could happen me. I work 10 hours a day, add another 35 min each way for the commute and then complicate it with the fact that I have an 18-month old with respiratory illness and my wife is not a native English speaker, which further complicates the fact that we are trying to close on a house this month and she is relying on me to ensure that we don’t get conned, but I don’t have the time to perform proper due diligence on the transaction. I have routinely and against my better judgement just signed documents without reading them, which is just dumb. I have a strong suspicion, confirmed by a friend who is a broker in another jurisdiction, that my mortgage broker is equal parts unscrupulous and dim. I am most likely getting reemed on every closing cost, but I don’t personally have the time to interview other brokers and even if I did, it is highly doubtful that a new broker could close by the settlement date putting my earnest money is jeopardy. At this stage and for all I know, I could have signed something that allows my broker to stay at my house rent free in the extra bedroom. So yeah, while what these people did was pretty epic, the affect on my life would be nearly similar if I somehow got conned out of the majority of our life savings through this transaction. So yeah, it can really happen to anyone. And if you are an earnest person, why wouldn’t you believe the constant media speculation and Palin’s own actions? We are not so cynical as to believe that there is no place for earnest people in this world, are we? Because last I checked it was a conservative virtue to get rich cheating the earnest and gullible and it was a progressive virtue to protect them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jay in Oregon:
That really is the irony on it. Also the goldy and the bronzy.
These guys project, continuously, like the Octoplex at the mall over Memorial Day weekend. It’s what they do.
WereBear
It was my intuition that he was drunk. But then… maybe he always acts that way? Not a fan, obviously.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brandon:
And yet, even with all that pressure, you have time to post a rather lengthy explanation of all that here.
fasteddie9318
@WereBear:
I think he does always act that way, because he’s pretty much constantly drunk. So you’re right both ways.
Monkey Business
If you don’t immediately know who the sucker is, there’s a decent chance it’s you.
WereBear
@fasteddie9318: Loved your Palin scam email :)
One of the factors in The Con is that just thinking of all-that-lovely-money fries the circuits; they want sooooo much for it to be true that they suspend their critical thinking facilities.
Would you pony up your bank information for five hundred dollars? It’s the staggering amount of the potential windfall that makes it work.
trollhattan
@fasteddie9318:
Where would you like your fresh Interwebs delivered? An where I now my cheque sending?
MattF
Yeah, Sarah’s a grifter, and if you believed her you’re an idiot. But having said that, I’ll add that there’s lots of grifters and lots of idiots. I don’t feel any particular sympathy or outrage about it.
But I do think the political geniuses in and around the McCain campaign, and, too, the Senator himself, bear responsibility here, and should be called on it.
Legalize
Too bad. These are people who are motivated by fear, selfishness, and hate. And they came out on the losing end of it. They say they have no regrets, so fuck ’em; they won’t ever look inward, learn from the experience, or take their experience as a lesson that might apply to people who are different than them. They are what is wrong with America.
I don’t actively wish anything bad to happen to them though.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Whatever happened to that pregnant woman and her husband who sold everything in preparation for the rapture?
Mike in NC
But when is her next book tour? I’m guessing something new will be coming out just in time for the holiday shopping season.
Sophist
It’s a psychological defense-mechanism. People don’t like to admit that they’ve been had, even to themselves, so they’ll double down and commit themselves even more, even if they know on some level that it’s all a fraud.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF:
Well, the consequences were averted by a wide margin, but yes, I think that McCain’s first “presidential” decision was like a TGV version of a fail train.
trollhattan
@MattF:
Yup. McCain’s role in her national political life is key; without the nomination she’d still just be grifting Alaska today, and probably have six grandkids. Picking her as veep was like having the punter pass the ball to the endzone from his own twelve-yard-line. A gadget play doomed to fail a hundred times per hundred attempts.
Kent
Wait a minute.
Are you telling me that if Palin had chosen to run and managed to drag out the process another few months until her campaign collapsed in New Hampshire then these people wouldn’t have been suckers and it wouldn’t have been a con?
Does one have to campaign for a candidate who actually stands a reasonable chance of winning in order to fall into the non-sucker category? If so then those Palinites are no more suckers then campaigners for Nader, the Greens & Libertarians, Jesse Jackson & the Rainbow Coalition, and Ross Perot were in the past. Or Eugene Debs and William Jennings Bryan in the more distant past.
People like to follow. They always have and always will.
IrishGirl
@tkogrumpy: LOL, amen my friend
licensed to kill time
Palin Failin’ Flailin’. Poor suckers, better luck next grift.
trollhattan
Speaking of idiot politicians (we were, yes?) how about that Senator Scott Brown?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_10/stay_classy_scott032657.php
Gideon Balzar
@tkogrumpy: Yes, I do feel sorry for them, poor old things. They are yearning for things to be as they were… in the old days.
Bubblegum Tate
@Cat Lady:
Bing bang boom
r€nato
At least Sister Sarah refrained from blaming the libruhl media for her decision not to run. Baby steps…
bluehill
Just wait. The “Palin in 2016” talk is going to start. These guys are like that doomsday cult that predicted the world was going to end this year. They will just come up with another prediction.
trollhattan
@bluehill:
Not to be crass (okay, a bit crass) in another four years she won’t be able to flaunt her looks like she does now so she’ll be left with that whiney, screechy voice and her glasses. The rubes will be attracted to some new, shiny thing.
OTOH, Begich’s senate seat comes up in ’14 (although I wonder whether she hasn’t burned all those Alaskan bridges to nowhere by now).
GeneJockey
I just had to check in with the political forum on a bowhunting site I used to frequent.
Half of them are terribly disappointed because she was so clearly the one to kick Obama’s butt.
Half of them are rationalizing how she’ll be much more powerful as NOT the President, and maybe she could be Secretary of Energy.
The comment that I found most amazing, though, was this one:
I don’t even know what that means. ‘Oh, my God! Palin’s not running, and hardly anyone even noticed! We’re all DOOMED!!!!”
Quaker in a Basement
those supporters that were the most invested said they were “disappointed,” but had “no regrets.
As anyone who has ever seen The Sting knows, the hallmark of a good con is when the mark never realizes he’s been taken.
Villago Delenda Est
@GeneJockey:
That one is indeed breathtaking.
I believe the East German judge is…wait…giving it a 9!
Morzer
I find it hard to be sorry for anyone who basically dumped their family to go and chase starbursts and groin-tingles.
GeneJockey
@Villago Delenda Est:
It reminds me of Jefferson Davis’ remarks upon the fall of Richmond, 5 days before Appomatox:
Yeah. How’s that work out for ya, Mr. Davis?
Davis X. Machina
@trollhattan:
Nikki Haley, if she can avoid indictment, should do nicely. The great thing about a type, from a producer’s point of view, is that you can always cast a type.
phoebes-in-santa fe
I don’t feel in the least bit sorry for those hate-filled morons on C4P who loathe that “socialist-Nazi Obambi” and the “Democrat” Party. They deserve to be taken for everything they can be. Every dime sent to SarahPac is one less dime able to be sent to some other Republican candidate.
And I am also a “bleeding heart liberal”…
Ash Can
They signed on to campaign for a dimwitted sociopath who would have visited warfare, theocracy, and economic disaster upon this nation, and who would have decimated education, the environment, and civil and personal rights.
No sympathy for them from me. At all.
asiangrrlMN
@fasteddie9318: Love it.
You know, I can feel sorry for them on a very vague, humanitarian level. But, they specifically worked to get a blatantly racist, sexist (yes, sexist), homophobic Mean Girl with no qualifications elected president. They hate me and my kind, all the while spouting their version of the Bible.
In other words, they are very low on my list of people for whom I feel sorry, especially as they will just throw their monies to the next pretty face who supports their reprehensible points of view.
You can’t save people from themselves.
Ken
“you don’t need a title to make a difference in this country.”
That’s right; you can be a community organizer.
Paul in KY
I don’t have any sympathy for them. In fact, I say: hahahaha!
Remember, these are the weirdos trying to send us back to the 15th century.
JoJo
My inner Nelson Muntz is saying “HA HA” right about now.
Seriously, why should I feel sorry for people who voluntarily ruined their own lives to provide free labor for a non-candidate?
unitreader
Follow the money.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@WereBear:
I thought the sunglasses he wore during the interview were a nice touch. No makeup for the bleary-eyed lush and he looks tough first thing in the AM! Jr’s an idiot and his fellow idiots now have a martyr so now he gets to wage his jihad on Obama. I wonder how long it will take him to milk his rubes for some cash to buy more booze?
He just might be too stupid to seize this opportunity to grift a living.
Harry R. Sohl
Palin’s not running? Who could have guessed?
If I was mean I would say “It looks like Twitter’s Twat is all dried up”, but instead I’ll just say, “Who could have guessed?”
~ Harry R. Sohl
jonas
@PurpleGirl: “Just what did Palin do that they think she’s even remotely qualified for a powerful position at any level of government.”
Mention Jesus several times in a speech.
guest
“The saddest part about this story is that there is no longer any evolutionary pressure to take idiots like this out of the gene pool.”
The jig is not quite up. We are only 4 years into this depression, and we’re already hard up against another financial crisis. Count on a decade or more of even deeper depresssion. These fools left jobs with u/e at 10% to 20%. Evolution is not thru with them yet.