The person for whom nearly half the American people voted had a conversation with Wolfie today:

BLITZER: Another question. What are your new ideas on how to take the Republican Party out of this rut that it’s in right now? Give me one or two new ideas that you’re going to propose to these governors who have gathered here in this hotel.

PALIN: Well, a lot of Republican governors have really good ideas for our nation because we’re the ones there on the front lines being held accountable every single day in service to the people whom have hired us in our own states and the planks in our platform are strong and they are good for America. It’s all about free enterprise and respecting the …

BLITZER: Does that mean you want to come up with a new Sarah Palin initiative that you want to release right now.

PALIN: Gah! Nothing specific right now. Sitting here in these chairs that I’m going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it’s our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don’t get away with that. We have to balance budgets and we’re dealing with multibillion dollar budgets and tens of thousands of employees in our organizations.

Kevin Drum – Mother Jones Blog: What Just Happened.

Would you like croutons with your word salad?

Don’t worry.  I can get you a job as a dog groomer.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNmcf4Y3lGM[/youtube]

A Fake Expert and a Phony Think Tank Fool Bloggers and the Mainstream News Media – NYTimes.com

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.  [more]

So one would conclude from reading this that the story about an unnamed McCain aide saying that Palin didn’t know that Africa is a country was a hoax, right?

Wrong.  This Times story is purely about two dipshits going to a lot of trouble to claim that one of them is that aide, which he isn’t.  None of this has anything to do with the truth (or lack thereof) of the original Palin/Africa story. You get the sense reading this Times article that the author is either deliberately eliding this distinction or really, really stupid.

The jury is still out on whether the “Palin didn’t know Africa is a continent and not a country” story is true, although one would think that the fact that the McCain camp has not denied it tends to indicate that they actually did spread the story, true or not.