News dribbles in about Sarah Palin...

(Right: my "Sarah Palin with Oil Derrick and Polar Bears" postcard which is still available)...

In this article by conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic (Sullivan's tagline is from Orwell: "To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle"), called The Odd Truths About Sarah Palin II: Africa Is A Country, he writes:

Well, it looks as if she may be the gift that keeps on giving. The narrative is now beginning to look something like this: the McCain campaign picked her essentially out of a hat...

They did no vetting. They assumed she wasn't completely out of her mind and dumb as a rock, which, one should concede, is not that big an assumption for a sitting governor with her approval ratings but still ...



Now all I want to say here, ahem, is that they realized all this about this person within a few days of picking her...

The friend who sent this link added: The Fox News folks, in case you don't want to listen to them, say it's now come out that when Sarah Palin was being prepped for her VP debate, her handlers determined that she did not know: 1) the nations in North America; 2) that Africa was a continent — with many countries — rather, simply, than a country.

Props to Fox for outing this story; shame on it for embargoing it until after the election….its outing now evidences that the recriminations are in high-gear (I love it when the evil eat their young).

My daughter sent along this info from Newsweek:

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported.

While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill.

Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband.

Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.