Sunday, May 2, 2010

The Lies Of Van Flein And Sarah Palin, Detailed By Geoffrey Dunn

This is an excellent article by Geoffrey Dunn on The Huffington Post, detailing the propaganda, spread by Sarah Palin and her supporters, painting Palin as a victim of partisan politics, while also detailing the facts that effectively debunk the conservative narrative.
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin -- recently dubbed by Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine as the "President of right-wing America" -- and her Anchorage attorney Thomas Van Flein continue to deal in duplicity and fraud in response to findings issued by the Alaska Department of Law regarding Ethics Act complaints levied against Palin and her deceptively named Alaska Fund Trust.

In a widely reported posting on Palin's Facebook page -- the intellectual bunker from which Palin launches her lies and verbal grenades, yet another "filter," as Andrew Sullivan recently noted, that "protects Palin from scrutiny" -- Van Flein issued yet another troubling and intentionally misleading statement about Palin's violations of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Van Flein, who is as pompous as he is verbose, rambled extensively in a missive entitled "Hit and Miss":
Yesterday we learned that another "ethics" complaint that was filed against Governor Palin was dismissed as baseless. (If you are counting, the Governor is 26-0-1 regarding such complaints or suits, with one still pending). Only this complaint was actually filed after she left office, and alleged that the mere existence of the Alaska Fund Trust (the legal defense fund set up for her to help defray the costs incurred during the Troopergate fiasco and related machinations that followed in its wake) was violative of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act as well as its solicitation or receipt of contributions. The raison d'ĂȘtre of the legal defense fund was inexorably linked to Governor Palin's nomination as the Republican candidate for Vice President and the post-nomination political tactics arising therefrom; thus making the nomination sine quo non for the fund. In a detailed opinion, the complaint was dismissed as lacking a factual or legal basis. 
Quite a mouthful (French, Latin and ungrammatical English in a single sentence!), and it's a pack of lies further obfuscated by the fact that neither Palin nor Van Flein had the intellectual integrity to make the opinion public. (Indeed, Palin is to political transparency what raw crude is to ocean water, but that's another matter).

In fact, the ruling -- which I have exclusively obtained -- is extremely limited in its scope (at two-and-half pages it is hardly "detailed") and does nothing to address the "factual" basis of the complaint, as Van Flein contends. Instead, it asserts simply that the Ethics Act applies solely "to a current officer and does not apply to a former public officer by definition." The complaint referenced was filed against Palin last year after she quit her governorship midterm amid mounting political controversies in Alaska.

Furthermore, the Alaska Fund Trust (set up to pay for Palin's mounting legal bills -- and not to be confused with SarahPAC, with which she spends money on her political allies and sycophants) remains "frozen" following a "preliminary finding" in July of 2009 in which independent Alaska Personnel Board investigator Thomas Daniel contended that "there is probable cause to believe that Governor Palin used, or attempted to use, her official position for personal gain" in establishing the fund.

At least six months after Palin quit her position, solicitations on the AFT website still referenced "current Governor Sarah Palin." It was palpably dishonest.
Dunn does an excellent job at pointing out the lies spread by the Palin camp, and not just about this most recent example, but her history of misleading Americans from before her selection as the 2008 vice-presidential candidate.

I would do no justice trying to sum it up so I suggest you read the entire article here.

I will leave you off with this - a music video by the Rollins Band for a song dating back to 1994 called "Liar."


The lyrics for this song, if this kind of music isn't your thing, are posted below the page break.

you think you're gonna to live your life alone
in darkness
and seclusion
yeah I know
you've been out there
tried to mix with those animals
and it just left you full of humiliated confusion
so you stagger back home
and wait for nothing
but the solitary refinement of your room spits you back out onto the street
and now you're desperate
and in need of human contact
and then
you meet me
and you whole world changes
because everything I say is everything you've ever wanted to hear
so you drop all your defenses and you drop all your fears
and you trust me completely
I'm perfect
in every way
cause I make you feel so strong and so powerful inside
you feel so lucky
but your ego obscures reality
and you never bother to wonder why
things are going so well
you wanna know why?
cause I'm a liar
yeah I'm a liar
I'll tear your mind out
I'll burn your soul
I'll turn you into me
I'll turn you into me
cause I'm a liar, a liar
a liar, a liar

I'll hide behind a smile
and understanding eyes
and I'll tell you things that you already know
so you can say
I really identify with you, so much
and all the time that you're needing me
is just the time that I'm bleeding you
don't you get it yet?
I'll come to you like an affliction
and I'll leave you like an addiction
you'll never forget me
you wanna know why?
cause I'm a liar
yeah I'm a liar
I'll rip your mind out
I'll burn your soul
I'll turn you into me
I'll turn you into me
cause I'm a liar, a liar
liar, liar, liar, liar

I don't know why I feel the need to lie
and cause you so much pain
maybe it's something inside
maybe it's something I can't explain
cause all I do
is mess you up and lie to you
I'm a liar
oh, I am a liar

if you'll give me one more chance
I swear that I will never lie to you again
because now I see the destructive power of a lie
they're stronger than truth
I can't believe I ever hurt you
I swear
I will never to you lie again, please
just give me one more chance
I will never lie to you again
I swear
that I will never tell a lie
I will never tell a lie
no, no
ha ha ha ha ha hah haa haa haa haaa
sucker
sucker!
oh, sucker
I am a liar
yeah, I am a liar
yeah I like it
I feel good
ohh I am a liar
yeah
I lie
I lie
I lie
oh, I lie
oh I lie
I lie
yeah
ohhh I'm a liar
I lie
yeah
I like it
I feel good
I'll lie again
and again
I'll lie again and again
and I'll keep lying
I promise

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