Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

The revolution will be supervised.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Let there be snark.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Infrastructure week. at last.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

You are here: Home / Economics / Grifters Gonna Grift / Continuing the VP Update

Continuing the VP Update

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This post is in: 

We’ve already checked in with has been – how about the never was?

The Sarah Palin Channel is conducting a fascinating investigation into just how little content it can publish without losing subscribers. Palin has published fewer than 22 minutes of video this month, and even that abysmally small number is inflated. For example, Palin’s post on December 4th is three minutes and 26 seconds long, but the final 1:20 is a SarahPAC video posted to YouTube more than three years ago. The longest video she’s posted this month was her Hunger Games-inspired Ask Me Anything (runtime: 6:44), which, by definition, is just Palin giving off-the-cuff responses to her fans’ questions. And the only piece of content she’s published in the last seven days is a 97-second-long video titled “The Never Resolved Debt Crisis,” that was shot in 2013; this is spun as “never-before-seen” content, rather than a boring bowl of word salad that should have been left in the garbage where it was originally dumped.

I know a few people who vote Republican, but I don’t know anyone who would pay $9.95 a month to subscribe to the Sarah Palin channel. Who are these people? Has anyone here ever met one?

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  3. 3.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    “The Never Resolved Debt Crisis,”

    I can only assume this is about the time Sarah went back to Neiman-Marcus forgetting that the McCain campaign wasn’t paying for it anymore?

  4. 4.

    beth

    Who are these people? Has anyone here ever met one?

    There you go again with those gotcha! questions, you liberal scum.

  5. 5.

    sharl

    I’ve never met someone who would actually pay for a subscription, but I’ve met people who, upon hearing a mini-rant from me about the Arctic Grifter, would get a quizzical look on their face and ask something like ‘so what is wrong with what she is saying?’ These people, typically, are my family back in Ohio. Love to see the people I love – and can’t do it as much as I’d like – but on matters like this, trips home are kind of a depressing wake-up call. :-(

    Fortunately she is mostly old news now, but there are plenty more like her waiting in the wings. Plenty of retirement and SS payments coming to those angry and frightened old white people out there, just waiting to be tapped by these grifters.

  6. 6.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I know people who thought she was great in 2008, but they don’t talk about her any more, let alone fork over money on the odd chance she’ll babble.

  9. 9.

    beth

    So she’s doing a half-assed job as a precursor to quitting altogether? Quelle surprise! Who could have guessed?

  10. 10.

    Violet

    Subscribers include organizations and people keeping an eye on her craziness. For instance, Wonkette has a running series on what stupid stuff she posts on her “Channel.” Wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of her subscribers are news organizations.

    The problem with this whole Sarah Palin Channel thing is that Sarah Palin doesn’t do work. Making videos takes time. Is work. She’s not going to do that very often. Whoever set her up with this thing didn’t take that into account.

  15. 15.

    Elizabelle

    OT: a blurb on NYTimes web FP:

    The Gulf of Maine’s waters are warming — faster than almost any ocean waters on earth, scientists say — and fish are voting with their fins for cooler places to live.

    Like the turn of phrase. Maybe this will wake some Maine Tea Partiers up. Maybe not.

    More sea bass, less cod. Lobsters abound, but warming water may allow bacterial shell disease to infect them.

    To make it topical: whatever comes out of the Wasilla sledneck’s piehole, science is cool and we need to protect our oceans and the fisheries.

  16. 16.

    Violet

    @Elizabelle: Apparently her daughter Bristol is dating some snow machine guy and they were seriously disappointed not to make it onto the upcoming MTV series “Slednecks.”

  17. 17.

    SamR

    I feel like there’s overlap between them and people who still pay $29.95 a month to America Online.

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Violet: I can’t even tell if you’re snarking

    @Elizabelle: some days the environmental news is so depressing that it makes all the other depressing news seem inconsequential.

  20. 20.

    Elizabelle

    @MomSense: Yeah. NYTimes has found some fishermen who blame regulators for their troubles. Uh huh.

    Continuing to ignore Snowbilly:

    Bah Humbug. From BBC News.

    A six-foot mechanical polar bear that dances and sings Christmas carols is being investigated after a council received a noise complaint.

    The bear – named Bernard – bursts into song when people walk past Loft Café in Shefford, Bedfordshire, where he has stood since 1 December.

    An enforcement officer told owners Rob and Teresa Farndon there had been a complaint about “noise nuisance”.

    The bear got through 2013 with no complaints. One of its tunes is Andy Williams’ It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    @Violet:

    Maybe MTV has standards, and was concerned with the family’s propensity to brawl?

    Maybe not …

    [ETA: Maybe they’re concerned they can’t restrict the Palins to strictly on-camera, for profit brawling. The Palins freelance …]

  26. 26.

    JGabriel

    mistermix @ top:

    … I don’t know anyone who would pay $9.95 a month to subscribe to the Sarah Palin channel. Who are these people?

    Wonkette, apparently. Maybe TPM, Politico, Gawker, The Onion, etc.

    Or do you mean people? As opposed to media companies looking for comedy material?

  28. 28.

    sharl

    OT, just caught the final minutes of Linda Tirado on Kojo Nnamdi’s local NPR show, discussing her book “Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America“. The link to that show is here (podcast should be up sometime this evening, for anyone interested in listening).

    Tirado discussed her recent post in Slate, noting how much response she got in comments from her ‘toaster anecdote’:

    In the long term, it makes way more sense to buy a good toaster. But if the good toaster is 30 bucks right now, and the crappiest toaster of them all is 10, it doesn’t matter how many times I have to replace it. Ten bucks it is, because I don’t have any extra tens.

    It actually costs money to save money.

    On Kojo’s show she said a number of Slate commenters took her to task for even owning a toaster – LUXURY! – and some suggested a number of absurd and potentially dangerous alternatives for making toast without such a precious appliance.

    I only took a quick look at the comments, and was depressed as expected, though glad to see a fair amount of push-back. I suspect commenter Alabama_Al is spot-on:

    I came in late to this discussion, so I clicked on “Oldest” and read the first 150 or so posts. From that sampling I’ve made a few observations about many of the posters on this board:

    1. I’ve never seen the phrase “Born on third base, but thinks he hit a triple” more amply demonstrated.

    2. If ignorance is bliss, many of you have achieved nirvana.

    3. Many are of the “I’d rather starve than receive food stamps” mindset. Yeah … right.

    4. Many seem to believe people can move, find and change jobs with the same ease they change clothes. (Is that truly your life experience? If so, you’re more fortunate than any lottery winner.)

  29. 29.

    ranchandsyrup

    Who are these people? Has anyone here ever met one?

    I know quite a few. They’re people who don’t really care what she has to say. They seem to enjoy more that Sister Sarah’s existence drives libruls “insane”. By watching, they are driving their enemies insane by proxy.

  30. 30.

    Violet

    @Elizabelle: No, the Palins probably wanted too much money and Sarah probably wanted a fortune for a cameo. MTV producers know how to make shows people watch, for whatever reason. They probably know the Palins would be nothing but trouble for their show.

  31. 31.

    Mike in NC

    Another Christmas without a new Sarah Palin book? Her window for grifting is rapidly slipping shut.

  32. 32.

    Tree With Water

    The arc of Sarah Palin’s “career” gives testament to the adage “you can’t fool all the people, all the time”. The silence from most of her erstwhile supporters can be chocked up to their understandable embarrassment at having been played for a fool by an even bigger fool.

  35. 35.

    Elizabelle

    @Violet:

    And Bristol is dating some guy named Joey Junker, who is a professional snowmachine rider.

    Has former Capitol Hill communications director Elizabeth Lauten weighed in on that yet? I understand she has a bit more free time these days.

  36. 36.

    geg6

    I don’t know anyone who would pay $9.95 a month to subscribe to the Sarah Palin channel. Who are these people? Has anyone here ever met one?

    Yes, they do exist. Well, at least one does. A woman with whom I used to be a fellow boat club member with is a huge Sarah Palin booster. She is the big wingnut on my FB page, no doubt about it. She goes completely bonkers whenever I post something derogatory about Caribou Barbie on FB. She’s continually arguing with me and all my FB friends about how bad the ni***rs are, how Democrats are traitors and how only Republicans are true Merkins. She’s one of the people I’ll never understand. She and her husband are both retired (I don’t think she ever worked) and collecting SS/Medicare benefits, but she adores Paul Ryan. Her husband supplements their SS with working part-time as a security guard at a public high school in a highly diverse town, but she puts down teachers and education all the time and, as mentioned, is quite the bigot. I don’t have many wingnut friends, but I keep her there on my friends list just to see what craziness they are spreading amongst themselves.

  40. 40.

    jl

    I guess it’s political equivalent of watching Lawrence Welk reruns.Glad my folks watch Welk, though. Never thought I would have an opportunity to say that.

  43. 43.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Rich Lowry and other GOP guys who see starbursts when she winks at them?

  44. 44.

    Tree With Water

    @Elizabelle: Sarah Palin will eventually bite the head off a chicken on a live televised broadcast, if that’s what it takes to continue her grift. And why not? As long as enough fools exist who are willing to sustain her coffers, it beats the hell out of working for a living.

  46. 46.

    Roger Moore

    I know a few people who vote Republican, but I don’t know anyone who would pay $9.95 a month to subscribe to the Sarah Palin channel. Who are these people?

    I assume her subscriber base is made of two kinds of people:

    1) Media types who are looking for easy material to show up once in a while, and
    2) People who subscribed way back then and have either forgotten about it or haven’t figured out how to cancel.

    Group 2 are essentially the same people who are keeping AOL in business.

  50. 50.

    srv

    Hell, that’s way more content than we ever got at PerotCharts.com

    Crushed that Truth to Liberal Power project of mine. We could refute all your lies, but 404 man… damn those Bush and Hillary black helicopters stealing Ross’ truthservers.

  51. 51.

    Amir Khalid

    @Tree With Water:
    No. Sarah Palin is more of a Lindsay Lohan type than an Ozzy Osbourne. She’s going to keep screwing up one gig after another, and the gigs will get smaller and smaller until they’re invisible to the naked eye.

  54. 54.

    Elizabelle

    Ahhh. Did not realize two hostages were killed in Sydney, along with the hostage-taker. There were 17 hostages in all. Sad.

  55. 55.

    srv

    There’s a FB pic going around of the towers burning and “Why I don’t care how we got information from terrorists”

    And then subtitled “Waterboarding is just our form a baptizing terrorists. Merica.”

    You can’t make this shit up, in case you were wondering where Moran guy has been.

  56. 56.

    The Red Pen

    I’ve never met a Sarah Palin subscriber, but here’s one from Free Republic:

    With the exception of the boss and maybe a few of the Texas FReepers, I think Governor Sarah Palin know more about politics than any of us. Her trenchant analysis of those seeking office is second to none. And I’ll add that nominal fee for a yearly subscription to The Sarah Palin Channel has been richly rewarding, not only for her incisive commentary but for the good, clean, wholesome, all-American entertainment. Along with RFD-TV, her channel is about the only thing worth viewing.

    Yeah… so…

  57. 57.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Elizabelle:

    One of its tunes is Andy Williams’ It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

    Screw complaining to the cops, that would make me go postal.

  58. 58.

    Barbara

    I decline to revisit the Facebook page swamp politics of one of my in-laws, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was still so besotted that she might at least consider subscribing. I have no idea what this woman sees in Palin, because she (my in-law) is smarter, better educated than Palin and runs her own business. Plus her kids are all high achievers.

  59. 59.

    Shana

    @Violet: What I don’t understand about that is how you make money as a professional snow machine ride, not that Bristol would be dating one, THAT makes perfect sense.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    Andrew Sullivan is on vacay this week and his guest bloggers have both posted pet pictures as part of their bona fides.

    Sully has a very good takedown of Cheney on MTP (assume it’s Sullivan, since no byline). The Depravity of Dick Cheney.

    Perhaps the only saving grace of this sociopath formerly in high office is that he understands that his legacy could well be as a war criminal unlike any in American history before him. That’s my only explanation for why he has to be out there day after day, year after year, attacking his successor, lambasting America’s return to civilization, and insisting that hanging people from shackles, freezing them to near-death, near-drowning them so that their abdomens are distended with water, anally raping them, breaking their limbs, and keeping them awake so long they hallucinated … is not somehow torture. Ask yourself: have you ever met someone who believes that? Outside the professional criminal classes, that is.

    And in his response today to the voluminous and undisputed evidence supplied by the CIA’s own internal documents, he has nothing specific or factual to say that can undermine any of it. He just insists, like a dad lost on a car trip, that he alone knows he’s not lost, whatever the map or GPS says.

    … [Cheney repeatedly said that] “Torture is what the al Qaeda terrorists did to 3,000 Americans on 9/11.”

    What I take from these statements is that the torture program was, for Cheney, partly an amateur thug’s idea of how you get intelligence, but partly also simply a means of revenge. Yes: revenge. …. It was a program that has no place in a civilized society.

    The man is a sociopath. He is a disgrace to his country. And he needs to be brought to justice.

    Not mockworthy.

  62. 62.

    NorthLeft12

    @Elizabelle: I despise that song. It is right down there with Paul McCartney’s “Simply having a Wonderful Christmastime”. Retch.

    If I lived anywhere near there I would probably have registered a complaint.

  64. 64.

    sharl

    @Shana: Not gonna look it up, but as I recall, Grifterella’s husband (Todd, I think?) made/makes a fair amount of money as a professional snowmobile driver. Endorsements from manufacturers (and maybe other sponsor types, a la NASCAR?) are where the money comes from, I think.

  66. 66.

    Tree With Water

    @NorthLeft12: Yeah, when a McCartney song misfires, it misfires badly. Fact: the first solo (video) appearance by Paul after the Fabs split up was on the Flip Wilson show. The Beatles were at the height of their reputations as musical magicians, and I was a Beatlemaniac. I looked so forward to it, certain it would sound great. Instead of great, it was Paul singing arguably his most wretched song, Mary Had A Little Lamb. I’m not kidding, that’s the title. You can probably find it on You Tube, but don’t waste your time. I’ll never forget the look on Wilson’s face when it ended, which was a cross between a “WTF was that”? look, and a “OK, well that was incredibly weird now on with the show” look.

  67. 67.

    geg6

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    She’s more of an acquaintance than a friend. And she always seemed nice when I knew her (just goes to show that you never really know people). She sought me out on FB, so I let her follow me. I won’t put up with her shit, though. I just tell her the way it is. Since she pursued the relationship, I’m fine with having her around to try to parse the newest wingnut outrage. I’m sure I or one of my many actual real friends will piss her off enough to unfriend me, though. None of us pull any punches or even attempt to be nice about it.

  68. 68.

    Micherr Markin

    The people who would subscribe to this are mirror universe doppelgangers of the people who continue to support a fraud like Anita Sarkeesian.

  69. 69.

    Fred

    I luv me some Sarah Palin. I personally know people who would never have imagined themselves voting for a black man who voted for Obama just so that idjit wouldn’t get within spitting distance of the White House.
    Sarah Palin is a world class moron and even right wing racists know that despite all their anti government BS that the oval office is no place for dummies. Or at least right after Dubaya they knew it but they’ve probably forgotten by now. Guvner Perry breaths a sigh of relief.

  70. 70.

    The Red Pen

    @Barbara:

    Well, you know, that could be a plant from one of Sarah’s staff members.

    My first thought reading this was, “I’m sure that Palin’s staffers have better things to do,” and then I realized that they probably don’t.

    @NorthLeft12:

    “trenchant” — I don’t believe that word means what that fellow at Free Republic thinks it means.

    Perhaps they meant “trenchmouth.”

  74. 74.

    SRW1

    So, ahm, $9.95 for 22 minutes of video, right?

    I don’t feel like that puts me in a position to decide on whether that’s a rip-off or not. There’s some important information missing. Like, how many times did Lovely Sarah wink during those 22 minutes. Could make it totally worthwhile that.

  76. 76.

    NotMax

    @SRW1

    Her contract may contain a clause forbidding production of a number of minutes larger than the number of her IQ.

  77. 77.

    lgerard

    @The Red Pen:

    best Sarah adoration from the Free Republic ever

    To: Jack Hammer

    Thanks for that post. I share your admiration of Sarah. Had the privilege of visiting Skagway where she spent her years as small child and then went to Wasilla.
    I remember thinking about her as I walked where she had grown up and served, and wondered if our nation would ever be worthy of such a leader again.

    54 posted on Saturday, February 18, 2012 7:12:33 PM by conservativejoy
    [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

  78. 78.

    Seanly

    @sharl:

    When I lost my job in Feb ’11, I started looking to favored locations to move at first. Wife & I weren’t enjoying Columbia, SC and were ready to pack up & move. After 3 months unemployed, my list of where to work began to widen significantly. After 4 months, I was already on to merely excluding some states like NJ & TX (I have previously done time working in NJ and wife hates TX). I ended up being unemployed for 7 months and had to move 2500 miles. The company that hired me did pay some moving expenses, but it was still a hard ordeal.

  79. 79.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Elizabelle:
    Narcissist. He is FURIOUS with America that we don’t understand that he is always right about everything. He’s been like this since Obama was elected. Before, really.

    He will never be brought to justice. Prosecuting a former president or vice-president for their policies, even if blatantly illegal, is a grey area in the law. Three guesses how the Supreme Court would rule.

  80. 80.

    cmorenc

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I wouldn’t read the content she posts even if you paid me $10.

    OTOH, since she is a voluminous generator of word salad, if the offer was $10/word, I would gladly read as much of her accumulated content at her site as I could for a couple of days, at which point I’d have earned several million dollars at least. But I don’t think I could stay with it long enough to become a billionaire. And if the challenge was instead to read every complete, coherent sentence she posted, I might either starve or go insane before I’d find enough of those to make it worthwhile.

  81. 81.

    LanceThruster

    Maybe the subscriptions come with a pair of genuine x-ray specs and they’re not letting on in order not to crash the site?

  82. 82.

    TriassicSands

    Who are these people?

    I doubt if just being incredibly stupid would suffice. It must be a combination of having too much money, too little intelligence, and being totally insane. I’d like to think than every penny that is wasted on Palin is a penny that doesn’t go to GOP political candidates and/or PACS.

  84. 84.

    Zinsky

    I’m speculating that it is used primarily for masturbatory purposes. So, the dirtbag pervs who think her skankiness is sexy (Yuck!) only need the five to seven minutes of video I t takes to spank the monkey. Content is irrelevant.

  85. 85.

    Sondra

    I think this is the teevee version of the “vanity press”. People who fancy themselves to be writers will self-publish if they have the money to do it.

    She can afford to keep her teevee brand afloat when subscriptions drop off. And there will always be some rich rghtwing sugar daddy out there for her.

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