Monday, November 30, 2009

Palin's Bus Hoax

I previously reported on a Daily Kos story that claimed that Sarah Palin was traveling for her book tour on a private aircraft owned by a charity run by Billy Graham's son Franklin. It seems the Kos story was erroneous as to the ownership of the aircraft but not the use of a private aircraft by "average American" Palin who has been pretending to be making the book tour by bus. Sorry about the error. Nonetheless, the reality is that everything about Palin except her insanity is fake and made up. I continue to hope the woman shoots herself down with the incessant stream of lies and inability to descern the difference between her imagination and objective reality. The Daily Beast has a story on Palin's faux bus tour. Here are some highlights:
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As much of her entourage, including HarperCollins publicist Tina Andreadis, risked a collective case of White Line Fever, covering more than 3,000 road miles during the book tour’s first week, Sarah Palin herself seems to have remained above it all, apparently cosseted in the luxury of a Gulfstream II 12-passenger jet rented from Universal Jet Aviation of Boca Raton, Florida, at a cost of more than $4,000 per hour.
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And just before the tour started, Palin herself said on her Facebook page: “I’ll post our progress from the road.” To further the illusion, the populist heroine gave televised interviews from the bus, including one to Greta Van Susteren en route to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
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It seems now that Palin hasn’t been on the bus, except for short hops between local airports and hotels and book-signing sites. Instead, as first reported by the Alaskan blog Palingates, she’s apparently been aboard UJT750, the Gulfstream American twin-jet that she first boarded at Westchester County airport shortly after noon on November 18, bound for Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the first stop on her tour.
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The full activity log for UJT750 can be found
here. The bottom line is that the plane’s goings and comings track Palin’s tour perfectly: from Grand Rapids to Washington, Pa. and then to Rochester, N.Y., Roanoke, Va., Fayetteville, N.C., Birmingham, Ala., and Jacksonville and Orlando.
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Her next signing is not until Thursday, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Presumably, she’ll fly to Fayetteville and then board her bus again for the short ride to the local Sam’s Club. Presumably, she’ll also fly over the much greater distances that separate the stops on the western half of her tour, which stretches from Dallas to Minneapolis. Will she continue to pretend she’s riding the bus?

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