Remember October, 2008? Remember how McCain and Palin went all shrilly over ACORN allegedly fraudulently registering voters before they didn't? The only thing that stopped them (not that it stopped the shrilly teabaggers and Republicans later) was the arrest of Mark Jacoby on October 20, 2008. He was arrested for fraud and perjury, pled guilty on June 16, 2009 to voter-registration fraud and is now serving 3 years probation. Sort of. Actually, not so much.

Keith Olbermann's report in the video above and Nicole Belle's post on Mr. Jacoby and his connections to the John McCain campaign, Steve Poizner, and Nathan Sproul are worth reviewing for some background on how the Republicans turned up the noise on ACORN while actually engaging in voter fraud here in California. For all the heat Republicans put on ACORN, the only actual voter fraud conviction was Mark Jacoby's. He was sentenced to 30 days of Cal-Trans work and 3 years probation.

While detangling the finances of the California Republican Party I ran into Jacoby again, apparently doing business as Star Petition Services.

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This morning my crazy thing locator pointed to this pro-Palin oped by Mary Matalin, who pooh-poohs complaints in Palin's book about the rough, nasty and foul-mouthed staffers inside the McCain campaign:

Time is the most valuable commodity on a campaign and you just can't waste it thinking about how to choose your words carefully or get your job done more diplomatically. If someone isn't in tears every day, that day wasn't all it could be advancing the campaign. I once witnessed an experienced (big) man slap a professional female colleague across the face over an ad buy... and no one thought anything of it, starting with the woman. In fact, she would have been insulted if anyone told her she should have been insulted.

Yes, politics is a hard job full of lots of pressure, long days, and high-stakes high-stress decision making. And many of the personalities attracted to that kind of work are narcissistic, most to the point of tantrums, and more than a few to the point of violence, and think it's no big deal. Matalin isn't just dishing about a specific instance here; she's pimping her insider importance--you bet she can remember just exactly the specific "ad buy" mistake that "deserved" the workplace assault and battery--and contrasting that insider importance to Palin's relative political naivete.

Matalin should be ashamed of herself, her politics, and her "professionalism" on a daily basis. That she actually points to an instance of physical assault of a female employee by a male superior as "the way it is in a campaign--get over it" just puts everything that's wrong with her argument in high relief. Does anyone wonder what would happen if that kind of thing happened in the private sector, or the outrage if a former corporate employee reported such physical assault as "acceptable in the business we're in" hearsay on the pages of CNN's website?

Ruh roh. It looks like the political soulmates of the 2008 election have lost that lovin' feeling:

In what reads like payback for McCain aides’ disparaging comments about her in the wake of the ticket’s loss to Barack Obama, Ms. Palin depicts the McCain campaign as overscripted, defeatist, disorganized and dunder-headed — slow to shift focus from the Iraq war to the cratering economy, insufficiently tough on Mr. Obama and contradictory in its media strategy. She also claims that the campaign billed her nearly $50,000 for “having been vetted.” The vetting, which was widely criticized in the press as being cursory and rushed, was, she insists, “thorough”: they knew “exactly what they’re getting.”

Some of Ms. Palin’s loudest complaints in this volume are directed at the McCain campaign’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt. Mr. Schmidt, ironically enough, was one of the aides to most forcefully make the case for putting her on the ticket in the first place, arguing to his boss, as Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson reported in their recent book “The Battle for America,” that she would shake up the race and help him get his “reform mojo back.” Robert Draper reported in The New York Times Magazine that neither Mr. Schmidt nor Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, apparently saw Ms. Palin’s “lack of familiarity with major national or international issues as a serious liability,” and that Mr. McCain, a former Navy pilot, saw the idea of upending the chessboard as a maverick kind of move.

All in all, Ms. Palin emerges from “Going Rogue” as an eager player in the blame game, thoroughly ungrateful toward the McCain campaign for putting her on the national stage. As for the McCain campaign, it often feels like a desperate and cynical operation, willing to make a risky Hail Mary pass in order to try to score a tactical win, instead of making a considered judgment as to who might be genuinely qualified to sit a heartbeat away from the Oval Office

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I'm not sure that "going rogue" is going to endear Palin to the party elders, from whom she must receive support if she does want to pursue a national office. Unless, of course, her plan is to dump the GOP and run like the Palin-endorsed Doug Hoffmann in NY-23 as a Conservative Party member. But then again, being politically astute was never part of Palin's appeal.

Sour grapes between the Palin and McCain factions aside, Palin's book appears to be a little on the factually-light side. Our friends at Media Matters have been reading through the book (better them than me) and have compiled a very interesting list of moments where Palin has gone rogue from the truth:

Rogue Fact: Palin still falsely claiming stimulus money for energy effiency she vetoed required tougher building codes

Rogue Fact: Palin suggests "no other candidate" subjected to scrutiny "about their hair, makeup, or clothes"

Rogue Fact: Palin misleads on aerial hunting

Rogue Fact: Palin memoir stands by falsehood that Obama opposed "protect[ing] babies born alive after botched abortions"

Rogue Fact: Palin falsely suggests poor "hit hardest" by cap-and-trade

Rogue Fact: In memoir, Palin still distorting NY Times article to defend "palling around with terrorists" claim

Rogue Fact: Palin attacks "Democrat lawmaker" who's actually a Republican

And they keep coming... Check Media Matters for updates.

Max Blumenthal: Sarah Palin, the GOP's blessing and curse.

Linda R. Monk, J.D.: Let Us Now Praise Uppity Women (h/t Where’s the Outrage?)

The Plum Line: Harry Reid calls GOP's transparency bluff: Is your health care bill a secret, or merely non-existent?

AMERICAblog News: Top McCain campaign advisor running out of insurance. He has a "pre-existing condition."

Apoliticus: Top 5 annoying talents of President Obama

Bill in Exile (not work safe) : New York Twenty Three

Family and Friends blog: Our Achilles Heel

(image courtesy of bjkeefe)

The right is collectively imploding over Sarah Palin's resignation, and as with any sort of passing there comes a period of grieving. Two major stages in that process are denial and anger, and the always-classy Erick Erickson of RedState is already showing signs of both:

1. Sarah Palin resigned, I think, to spare her family from more attacks. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Sarah Palin is doing this just days after a very nasty Vanity Fair article where folks like Nicolle Wallace and, according to Bill Kristol, McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt (though I’m told Schmidt is not involved), savaged her.

2. Unfortunately, by resigning, I think the left and national media will be emboldened to ritualistically engage in the metaphorical gang raping of conservative politicians, particularly those who are female and have children. They’ll decide savaging Palin’s family drove her from office, so the sky’s the limit on the next conservative with kids.

Finally, Erickson goes flat out delusional, comparing Palin's resignation to Obi Wan Kenobi taking one for the team and sacrificing it all to fight the dark side:

4. I’ve had this running thought all day, perhaps because I was watching it on TV in HD for the first time, that this is kind of like Ben Kenobi letting Darth Vader strike him down. Palin is not going to run in 2012, but by doing this she can now become Barack Obama’s worst nightmare, and help rebuild the opposition to Obama. How? Because were she to remain a 2012 contender, she’d keep having stories by anonymous McCain campaign staffers and other 2012 contenders going after her and her family. Take that ambition off the table and it neutralizes a lot of that. So she can focus on candidates and ideas without an ulterior motive focused on 2012.

Read on...

Really? Erick, you know this wasn't about her children. She used them as political props all through the '08 campaign and continued to do it till the bitter end. And in the end, it was her ineptitude and ethical shortcomings that did her in. Perhaps the enduring lesson from this tragic political tale with be that going forward, politicians of all stripes should think twice about exploiting their children for political gain.

Is there an indictment coming for Palin? That remains to be seen, but one thing seems certain -- Sarah Palin is now toxic. She walked away from the people of her state when the going got tough and has shed any remaining crumbs of credibility she may have had left.

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My first week on the job here at Crooks and Liars, I went on CNN Newsroom with Rick Sanchez to talk about an investigative piece co-written with Max Blumenthal about Sarah Palin's longtime dalliances with Alaska's far-right elements, particularly the secessionist Alaska Independence Party.

At the time, the McCain campaign blew us off publicly. And unfortunately, none of our colleagues in other media settings picked up on the story and asked further questions about the issues it raised -- particularly at a time when the McCain campaign was busy accusing Barack Obama of "palling around" with "terrorists" and extremists.

Now, it turns out that my short appearance on TV threw Sarah Palin into a tizzy and provoked a quarrel with Steve Schmidt of the McCain campaign. This from a CBS story by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe:

Internal campaign e-mails exchanged three weeks before Election Day offer a rare look at just how frustrated then Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had become with the manner in which top McCain campaign aides were handling her candidacy. The e-mails, obtained exclusively, also highlight the power struggle and thinly veiled acrimony that pervaded the relationship between Palin and the campaign's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt.

The episode in question began when an investigative report published on the left-leaning Web site Salon.com raised questions about Palin's relationship with members of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) when she was mayor of Wasilla. The AIP's platform calls for a vote giving Alaskans the option to secede from the United States. It had already been widely known that Todd Palin was a registered member of the AIP from 1995 to 2002 and that Governor Palin had taped a recorded greeting at the party's 2008 convention.

On the morning of Oct. 15, Palin was aboard her campaign jet and en route to New Hampshire when she happened to catch a disparaging CNN segment that touted the Salon.com story, complete with a provocative graphic at the bottom of the screen reading, "THE PALINS AND THE FRINGE."

While shaking hands after a rally later that afternoon, someone on the rope line shouted a remark at Palin about the AIP.

The comment set her off. She worried that the campaign was not sufficiently mitigating the issue of her alleged connection to the party, which despite a platform that harkens more to the Civil War than the 21st century, continued to play a serious role in Alaska politics.

Palin blasted out an e-mail with the subject line "Todd" to Schmidt, campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisor Nicolle Wallace, copying her husband on the message (all of the e-mails are reprinted below as written).

"Pls get in front of that ridiculous issue that's cropped up all day today - two reporters, a protestor's sign, and many shout-outs all claiming Todd's involvement in an anti-American political party," Palin wrote. "It's bull, and I don't want to have to keep reacting to it ... Pls have statement given on this so it's put to bed."

Schmidt hit "reply to all" less than five minutes after Palin's e-mail was sent. "Ignore it," he wrote. "He was a member of the aip? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves america."

This clear cut response from the campaign's top dog carried an air of finality, but it did not satisfy Palin. She responded with another e-mail, adding five more names to the "cc" box, all of whom traveled on her campaign plane. They included her senior political adviser Tucker Eskew, senior aide Jason Recher, the lone traveling aide from her Alaska office Kris Perry, press secretary Tracey Schmitt and personal assistant Bexie Nobles.

Palin's insertion of the five additional staffers in the e-mail chain was an apparent attempt to rally her own troops in the face of a decision from the commanding general with which she disagreed. Her inclusion of her personal assistant was particularly telling about her quest for affirmation and support in numbers, since the young staffer was not in a position to have any input on campaign strategy.

"That's not part of their platform and he was only a 'member' bc independent alaskans too often check that 'Alaska Independent' box on voter registrations thinking it just means non partisan," Palin wrote. "He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box. I still want it fixed."

Now, the problem with this response is that it's just factually false. Palin's connections with the AIP ran much, much deeper than Todd's paper affiliation. As we explained in the Salon story:

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Stealers Wheel - Stuck In The Middle With You

If it's Sunday, it's Republican spin day on the news shows. Holy deity of your choice, is this a gruesome line-up or what? Almost like we didn't have an election in November. On what Planet Bizarro do we live that Liz Cheney and former McCain campaign advisor Steve Schmidt have anything constructive to add to the national dialogue? Could someone tell the people at This Week that it might be nice to not have to look at these losers over and over? And could we get any less balance to discuss President Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame University than have the Notre Dame Professor of Theology and a Notre Dame Right-to-Life student on FoxNews Sunday and State of the Union respectively? Nevermind that David Gregory's ratings are in the toilet, the main event: DNC chair Tim Kaine vs. RNC chair Michael Steele on Meet the Press. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

ABC's "This Week" - Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Jim Webb, D-Va.; Republican strategist Liz Cheney, daughter to former Vice President Dick Cheney; Steve Schmidt, adviser to John McCain for the 2008 presidential election.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union; Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Democratic National Committee chairman; Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Savannah Guthrie, Howard Fineman, Andrew Sullivan, Michele Norris. Topics: Why has Dick Cheney become so vocal against President Obama's policies? In the Supreme Court pick, is it more important for President Obama to make [sic]. Meter Questions: Has Dick Cheney influenced President Obama's national security policy decisions? YES: 4 NO: 8; Can Obama keep Pakistan's government in power? YES: 2 No: 10

CNN's "State of the Union" - White House Budget Director Peter Orszag; Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio; Emily Toates, student at Notre Dame and member of "Right to Life" group.

CNN's "Reliable Sources" - Hollywood edition with Mariel Hemingway and Barry Levinson.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - An exclusive interview with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. If Pakistan and Afghanistan are the biggest global stories of the moment (and they are), the man who can shed the most light on them is surely Pervez Musharraf - the man who resigned from power in Pakistan just nine months ago

"Fox News Sunday" - Rev. Richard McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame; Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life; Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Sigh. So what's catching your eye this morning?

Wow. Just when you thought the anecdotes of just how incompetent the McCain campaign was were over, we get this...

MyFox:

Private information at bargain prices. It was a high-tech flub at the McCain-Palin campaign headquarters in Arlington when Fox 5’s Investigative Reporter Tisha Thompson bought a Blackberry device containing confidential campaign information.

It started with a snippet we read on page A23 in Thursday’s Washington Post. The McCain-Palin campaign was going to sell its used office inventory at low prices.

I can understand trying to recoup some of your election season loses, but is there any excuse for this kind of incompetence? Geez.

The FOX reporter called a few of the numbers stored in the phone's memory and got this classic response.

“They should have wiped that stuff out,” another said. But he added, “Given the way the campaign was run, this is not a surprise.”

Yep. That bout sums it all up.

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Fox exec John Moody has it precisely right: the "Obama fan attacked McCain worker" hoax in fact does "forever link" the McCain campaign to race-baiting.

However, it's not just McCain. The entire Republican Party this year has been revealed as the Party of Racial Fear. Nor is it anything new: Republicans for years have tried to make hay off of racially incendiary cases that turn out to tell us more about the motives and worldviews of the torch-bearing mob than anything they might be chanting.

Pam Spaulding nails it:

It's like Susan Smith and Charles Stuart all over again -- a disturbed person blaming a non-existent black man for a crime, fomenting the fear of "the Other" based on our country's inability to acknowledge and deal with race, difference, and stereotypes. That this perpetrator of a hoax was a McCain campaign worker underscores the whole whipped up race frenzy of the McCain mob that we've seen in the last several weeks. It's time to flush this toxic sludge away.

What's equally remarkable, we might add, is the eager role played both by the McCain campaign and by the wingnutosphere -- led by Matt Drudge -- in whipping up a frenzy around this case without considering the potentially incendiary nature of the charges, not to mention the actual credibility of the storytellers.

This is particularly the case with the Mark Noonans out there, furiously clinging to their belief that the story is true, and claiming that the attack heralded the onset of "Nazism 2.0" under Obama: "God help us if Obama wins."

Along with John McCain, their credibility has just sustained a serious body blow. Couldn't be happening to a nicer bunch.

Sweet Jesus, this guy makes me hate him more and more...

Think Progress:

On Fox News today, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) discussed the downturn in Sen. John McCain's presidential prospects, saying McCain "is behind now because of the economy." Lieberman then said that he hopes the House passes bailout legislation tomorrow because "it will be good for our country."

"But frankly, it will be good for John McCain too," added Lieberman, explaining that "it will get people back to comparing the two candidates free of a sense of crisis that may make them want to turn against Republicans."

I don't think he talked to the McCain campaign before doing the interview, because at the same time, here's John McCain on Morning Joe:

Singer pointed out a couple odd McCain moments from the last couple days, and I'd like to add one more from today's Morning Joe (via Joe at AMERICAblog):

"This bill is putting us on the brink of economic disaster."

McCain voted for it...less than 24 hours ago.