And, even better, she is forcing her staff to make the hellish trek on the bus, as she flies in comfort.

Palin has been emerging from the bus at tour stops, and giving interviews from the bus, and pretending to post to Facebook from the bus, but that is all a lie, because she physically cannot stop lying, ever.

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.

On November 25, the plane carried Palin, her parents, her two youngest children and her Aunt Katie to Pasco, Washington, for Thanksgiving. And there it sat, at Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco, for four full days, which is a lot of inactivity for a plane that rents for more than $4,000 an hour. But it was Thanksgiving weekend and the Pasco-Richland area was where Palin wanted to be.

This is another wonderful example of Sarah Palin creating her own fucking mess for herself through her incredible contempt for her followers, her own stupidity, and her staff's astounding ineptitude. Because using a plane to conduct a book tour is a standard practice. But pretending that you are taking a bus and driving all night—because you want to appear salt-of-the-earth—while you are actually flying and staying in hotels is insane. Sarah Palin is just baiting Andrew Sullivan, now.

[Pic: AP]

The subtext of the Times story is that Obama is classless, and that he snubbed the GOP in his first state dinner. Even though he did actually invite Minority Leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, both of whom snubbed Obama by declining to attend. (He also invited Republican governor Bobby Jindal, who did attend. And Dick Lugar was there, for some reason. And Eric Cantor, who wasn't invited to the dinner, was invited to the pre-dinner reception.)

So it doesn't look like much of a snub to us, at all. But whatever—it is fair game for a basically openly conservative paper to publish a news story with a partisan premise, so long as it's factually accurate, which this one is.

Then, of course, Fox picks up on this breaking news. Suddenly, the headline switches from "Top Republican lawmakers not attending State Dinner" to "Top Republican Lawmakers Not Invited to Obama's First State Dinner."

"Top Republican lawmakers," taken literally, means Boehner and McConnell, who were invited, and chose not to attend.

But Fox doesn't even acknowledge that.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner won't be there; he's on Thanksgiving break and home in Ohio. His deputy, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, also didn't get an invitation to the dinner.

Cantor also didn't get an invitation? That's a weird word choice, considering that the guy named in the previous sentence did get an invite. But that fact is, weirdly, edited out.

This is why Fox is way more successful than the Moonie Times: a grown-up could read that Times story and, based on the facts presented in that story, end up disagreeing with its premise. In order to preclude that possibility, Fox just makes up the facts to suit the premise.

(Thanks to readers Ronald and James Allen for alerting us to this very instructional case-study in modern journalism.)

For example, the charmers at my hometown paper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, saw an increase in circulation this year by 6.6%. Which is awesome! Except: strange. Because Vegas' economy is in the toilet, having been crippled by foreclosures and joblessness. Why wouldn't these people just go online and get that shit for free? Funny you'd ask, because weekday sales dropped by 12,000 copies.

So. About that increase in circulation. Is the mob fixing numbers in Vegas again, or what? So old-school. Here's how this works: back in April, the Audit Bureau of Circulations changed their rules to let numbers look better to people who look at circulation rates, like ad buyers (and media reporters). The standard-change was bad. Like, disingenuous. Which is how the Review-Journal went up in circulation this year.

The change happened because the price the newspaper was charging for the online replica — it costs print customers an extra 50 cents per week — hadn't been high enough to qualify as paid circulation until the ABC's April change. That let newspapers define their paying readers as anyone who spends at least a penny for a copy. Previously, a newspaper copy had to sell for at least 25 percent of the basic price to qualify as paid circulation.

Right, so, by that logic, $1 could potentially equal 100 copies, and $100 equals 10,000 copies. Here's where I'd write that that's five times the amount of copies of the LVRJ distributed in Vegas, but I can't, because we have no idea how many copies are actually distributed! Fun. How do advertisers feel about this runaround? Raging mad, right? Um, kind of. One advertiser thinks the numbers are "less credible."

You really have to do your homework now and ask newspapers about how much double counting is going on,'' said Allison Howald, U.S. director of print investment at PHD Media.

The rage doesn't come across quite like I was expecting it to.

Hopefully, "less credible" is a kind euphemism for "complete bullshit," or some advertisers are going to wake up one day and start asking questions about why the 200,000 eyes they were promised on their quarter-page actually only amounts to a third-grade arts class making paper machete hats. You'd think these sketchy practices are limited to sleazy gambling towns like Vegas, though, right? WRONG again. Wall Street Journal, you guys will be transparent, right?

Nope. WSJ spokesman Robert Christie wouldn't respond to the AP's questions for quote on the new rules, including whether or not their numbers included digital subscriptions.

Including the print side, the Journal's total circulation edged up by just 0.6 percent to 2.02 million. ''We followed the ABC's rules and methodology,'' Christie said

Right, so, newspapers: more fucked than previously statistically "proven."

I'm forgetting where I read about the guy who used to steal ATM receipts of trashcans to impress dates with his huge bank account. This reminds me of that.

Last week, the Daily Show caught Sean Hannity passing off old tea-party footage as representative of the (much smaller) crowd at recent protest against healthcare. Today, it's Think Progress pointing out the sleight-of-video: These shots of what is allegedly "HAPPENING NOW"—"Sarah Palin continuing to draw huge crowds" according to "video just coming into us"—really look like campaign rallies. Especially the people waving McCain-Palin signs and wearing McCain-Palin shirt. Could crazed Palinites have pulled their "Country First" signs and campaign T-shirts out of the closet in an effort to relive the glory days of '08? Yes, they could have. Does Fox deserve the benefit of the doubt on this score? No. It does not.

Also, the footage features Palin wearing her "up-do," which she seems to have abandoned of late, to judge by her appearances on Oprah and Sean Hannity:

Nice groundwork by whoever got these from the McCain campaign at the Huffington Post, where Sam Stein reports today on a few contradictions the emails make with portions of the book.

Granted, they have to do with Palin's Saturday Night Live appearance, a prank on Palin by a bunch of morning radio goons, and the precise level McCain's campaign manager had to be an asshole to Palin's staffers, but still: if she's lied about these things, what else?

The first email is about Sarah's trepidation regarding going on SNL. McCain's campaign was all for it. Sarah wasn't. She thought SNL was "whack." And she wasn't about to go on the show to yuk it up with those people.

"Not after seeing clips of what they've been playing re: my family," Palin writes to campaign manager Steve Schmidt..."I had no idea how gross 'celebrities' on that show and in other celebrity venues could get when it comes to family and other aspects of my life that have nothing to do with seeking the vp slot. These folks are whack - didn't know it was as bad as it is... what's the upside in giving them any celebrity venue a ratings boost? That's Todd's input also.."

Good thing she didn't see last night's episode.

Of course, Steve Schmidt basically told her "do it if you want, or don't." So, she doesn't want to go on SNL, McCain's manager basically says fine, fuckit, then don't. What does she run in the book?

The Sarah Palin Reality To Book Copy Alchemizer, everyone:

"Let's do this," I said. "Let's go on and neutralize some of this, and have some fun!" Of course, the idea was met with massive back-and-forth haggling.

Boom. Met with haggling by who? Herself? Next, the Canadian DJ prank, in which two morning DJs got Palin on the phone pretending to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It was funny and awesome. And exposed a huge rift in the campaign.

[T]he McCain staffer also provided the email that Schmidt sent to Palin and her staff after she was prank[ed]..."Who set this up? Are you kidding me? Did it occur to anyone that the french president wouldn't be looking to have a conversation with the vicepresidential candidate 3 days before the election," Schmidt writes. "From this moment forward, no interview occurs without my direct signoff. Nothing. I want to know the exact details of this. I want to know who is responsible."

Right? Because if you were a campaign manager, you'd be pretty fucking pissed, too. But Schmidt appears to handle it moderately well. Palin's version of the story's slightly different, though.

In Going Rogue, Palin recalls Schmidt screaming directly at her, so much so that it "blew my hair back."

Also, she noted that Schmidt called her. The aides are calling that bullshit, saying no call happened, that Schmidt's supposed wrath of fury was aimed at staff and not Palin, and that this was all done over email.

The best, though, is this: an email from Sarah Palin that appears to be her, apologizing for completely screwing the pooch on media appearances, and thanking the staff for their hard work in the face of her Rainman-like ability to completely Hindenburg every high-profile press opportunity given to her. So there is some self-awareness there! Damn.

"I am very sorry," Palin writes to Nicolle Wallace, Steve Schmidt, and Rick Davis, with her husband, Todd, cc:ed. "u guys are working double-triple time on this blundered-up stuff that they spin bc of my visits w press - while I apologize I say I love you guys!!!"

Naturally, the book reportedly has Palin painting the McCain campaign as overly controlling and temperamental. Maybe they were temperamental: I'd be fuckingmental if I had to work with Palin. Even so, though, her characterizations are appearing to be alternate realities, or—here's a good one I can't take credit for—"magical realism."

What else is happening with Going Rogue today? Michiko Kakutani savaged it the Times today, penning less a review than an curbside beating. Newly inducted N.W.A. member and Atlantic columnist Andrew Sullivan, now fully aware that Sarah's an avid Daily Dish reader, has basically turned his blog into the Suck It Sarah Palin Daily Digest. In one post, he organizes all of her lies. In another, he frisks the above HuffPo story, giving it his own nice twist:

Palin is a delusional fantasist, existing in a world of her own imagination, asserting fact after fact that are demonstrably untrue, and unable to adjust to the actual reality after it has been demonstrated beyond any empirical doubt....She is a deeply disturbed individual.

The doc-tah is in.

The release of Going Rogue is like that moment in dodgeball when there's only one kid left on the other side of the court, and the last ball has rolled away from them, and everyone's just standing around, waiting to see who's going to pick up the ball and really go for the killshot.

$50 on this guy.

[Photo via Getty Images]

The AP got a copy of Goin' Rogue, Also: Modern Warfare 2 and they totally read it even, which is probably more than Sarah can say.

"... [S]he says that most of her legal bills were generated defending what she called frivolous ethics complaints, but she reveals that about one-tenth of the $500,000 was a bill she received to pay for the McCain campaign vetting her for the VP nod.

She said when she asked the McCain campaign if it would help her financially, she was told McCain's camp would have paid all the bills if he'd won; since he lost, the vetting legal bills were her responsibility."

You may be shocked to learn that this is not a thing that happens, ever, "billing" someone for their own "vetting." The McCain campaign paid for its own vetting. Maybe Sarah Palin paid her own lawyer for lawyering work during that process? In that case, her lawyer would've been billing her for his services, to her, and that is not a thing John McCain made her pay for.

And the other thing, where the McCain campaign did not pay her legal bills for her own legal problems related to Troopergate and other ethics investigations? In addition to not being his responsibility, the McCain campaign thought it would probably violate the law to pay her legal bills with campaign money.

(Oh, Sarah Palin Facebooked about this:

As you probably have heard, the AP snagged a copy of my memoir, 'Going Rogue,' before its Tuesday release. And as is expected, the AP and a number of subsequent media outlets are erroneously reporting the contents of the book.

To be fair, the AP originally reported that McCain handed her a $500,000 bill. The real price on the imaginary bill that Palin made up for her book of lies and hate was $50,000. So she is totally right.)

According to a statement issued by the couple's attorney, Richard will plead to attempting to influence a public servant—a felony—and Mayumi will plead to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report. Prosecutors, the statement said, have agreed to recommend a sentence of probation, meaning no jail time. According to CNN, prosecutors couldn't be reached to confirm the deal.

The deal was precipitated, the Heene's attorney said, by prosecutors' threat to deport Mayumi, who is a Japanese national. From the statement:

It is supremely ironic that law enforcement has expressed such grave concern over the welfare of the children, but it was ultimately the threat of taking the children's mother from the family and deporting her to Japan which fueled this deal.

It's even more supremely ironic that the attorney for a woman who deliberately threw her child into the middle of a self-generated media shitstorm and commanded him to lie and watched him throw up on TV so she could be on TV more is calling prosecutors' legitimate concern for that child's welfare under her care "ironic."

We can only hope that the district attorney bars any reality TV deals as a condition of probation.

According to Dylan Stableford: "A rep for Fox says that Hannity will address the issue on his show tonight."

Seriously, what will he say? The video evidence is obvious, and Hannity is heard babbling about how it is "Thursday" over footage from a Saturday in September, thus making some sort of "we didn't intend to deceive we just used rally file footage" argument a nonstarter.

But, you know, this is Sean Hannity, who does not care about "the truth" or "honesty" or "not booking insane antisemites on the show and not mentioning that they are insane antisemites," so who cares what he will say.

It will probably just be something like "the Jews sneaked in that other footage and tricked me into airing it, because I, Sean Hannity, am an antisemite who hates the Jews."

TMZ just kind of drops this offhandedly in a post about Prejean being shown the tape by a rival lawyer:

The video the lawyer showed Carrie is extremely graphic and has never been released publicly. We know that, because TMZ obtained the video months ago but decided not to post it because it was so racy.

We like to picture a big, menacing team of hatchet-wielding attorneys standing over Harvey Levin's head as we read this. Anyhow, kudos to TMZ on its newfound virtue. If they don't want the tape, I reckon we'd take it.
[Pic: Getty]

We even got a tipster email about it from someone at the Post!

The New York Post is reporting that an assistant deputy director of NJ Gov. Jon Corzine's re-election campaign was arrested last night after cops found ecstasy tablets wrapped and ready to be sold in his car.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/corzine_campaign_staffer_arrested_90W38gZ0Z0ZRfYDxgrAh3N

And that link from the Post now leads to a blank page. Same with WABC. Someone grabbed the Post report, which read like this:

Jason Shih, 25, was pulled over by East Rutherford cops at about 11:30 p.m. last night because he was talking on his cell phone on Route 17, said Lt. Chris Conforti of the East Rutherford police. Officers wound up finding 19 "blue star" ecstasy tablets in Shih's car, each wrapped in its own little plastic bag. Shih — who was stopped within 100 feet of Becton Regional High School — also had had "several hundred" empty plastic bags in his car, Conforti said. Shih told police he worked for Corzine's campaign, and had several campaign-related items in his car, police said. Corzine spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith said Shih is not on the payroll of the campaign or the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, and that the campaign doesn't know who he is.

That was at 2:30 PM, and the article's timestamp said that it was posted at 9:53 AM and updated at 12:53 AM, most likely with the Corzine staff denial that this guy had anything to do with them. So...what happened? One of three things. Conspiracy Theories, go!

1. Shih was planted by opposition to get busted by cops, to try and move bad press for Corzine. They only hosed the Post and one TV station. Weak.

2. The Corzine campaign actually knows this clown and there's a massive cover-up. Yeah, because a relatively high-ranking deputy working for Corzine's driving around Jersey today with a grip of Blue Star E instead of working at the campaign headquarters. This is about as likely as ecstasy becoming hip again is.

3. Some B & T ravebro was like, Brah. I work fah Jahn Cahrzine! And then the Corzine campaign got pissed, and called up these outlets, who then either removed the story because they didn't want to be on the bad side of the future Governor of New Jersey, or they're going to run a new story tomorrow about how this dumbass used a dumb excuse to not get out of a drug arrest, which you just know the Post can't wait to do. As far as the bust, the cops either saw what an assclown this guy was in plain sight, or they just don't give a shit who you work for in Dirty Jerz. You cross Johnny Law, it's oveh. And now you know. Also, 20 of Shih's "boys" in Jerz are gonna be so totally bummed, brah. They were gonna get the E and take it with their honeys and now they're gonna have to just drink a bunch of Patron, bro. Patron? PATRON!!!

In Moore's story—which, we remind you again, was an amusing anecdote delivered on a late-night comedy talk show program—he went to Chavez's hotel room to ask him to please quiet down and ended up partying with him all night. They consumed a bottle and a half of tequila. And the punchline was that Chavez's speech to the UN was made up mostly of things Moore said to him, while drunk.

Now. According to the public record, Chavez and Moore met in Venice for three hours during the day. And also Chavez is a teetotaler.

Obviously, Marxists are not happy with Moore.

Franz JT Lee, a Marxist academic and blogger, claimed that the film-maker's comments were "part of the United States' 'war of ideas'" against Venezuela, and said similar "propaganda" led to the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

Right. Well. Michael Moore himself is not happy with people repeating this made-up anecdote he told, though! He claims that the bit where the meeting happened late at night, and not during the day, is true! He does not make any claims about the rest of it, with the tequila and the speech. But the time of day, though, that is rock solid.

Obviously Moore is a liar who hates America and we must always remember that even when he has a legitimate point to make about anything. (He is fat, too.)

Commence arguing!

An obscure blogger published a terribly written "report" on how "famed Time reporter Joe Klein" got a look at Barack Obama's undergraduate thesis on the "so-called founding fathers." This obvious satire was even tagged "satire," which is what Denton is always trying to get me to do when I guest at Deadspin. (It ruins the joke, Nick!)

Michael Ledeen, of course, immediately picked it up and even wrote this hilarious line:

Maybe instead of fuming about words that Rush Limbaugh never uttered, the paladins of the free press might ask the president about words that he did write.

Yes, maybe! Maybe they might ask him that! Hah!

Rush Limbaugh got so excited about this! He called imaginary college student Obama a "little boy" and read from his imaginary thesis. And then Rush was like oh this might be fake.

And Rush said "I have had this happen to me," referring to the time everyone mistakenly repeated one quote about black people that Rush Limbaugh did not actually say. And when it was pointed out to the media that Rush Limbaugh did not say this thing, Rush claims "the media" said "it doesn't matter because we know he thinks it." You can go ahead and watch Rick Sanchez apologize to Rush and decide if Rush has a point or not. (Hint: he doesn't.)

It's not like anyone's behavior here is unexpected or even all that terrible, it's mostly just hilarious. Once again: if you make something up and put it on the internet Michele Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh will believe it.

TV critics get thousands of promotional e-mails every day, and when Fox News sent one to Barnhart last week trying to generate excitement over Glenn Beck's batshit conspiracies about the swine flu vaccine, he thought it was kind of funny. So he posted this to Twitter:

Fox News PR just emailed to let me know Glenn Beck will be raising fears tonight on his TV show. No poop, Poirot.

It's funny because it's true. Fox's unabashed fearmongering—indeed, it's proud promotion of fearmongering as such—tickled Keith Olbermann, who mentioned the e-mail on his show.

But then something strange happened: On Monday, the Huffington Post's Danny Shea posted a story calling bullshit on Barnhart and Olbermann. Shea quoted an anonymous Fox News spokesperson saying the network never sent any such e-mail:

"We never sent anything to Barnhart and he refused to respond to us when directly asked who he received that from," a Fox News spokesperson said.

The distinction is important, as e-mails from the PR department can be perceived as on-the-record and thus legitimized as the network's official position on a subject.

Yes, what a vitally important distinction! Barnhart sadly—and stupidly—deleted the e-mail immediately after he wrote about it on Twitter, so he was left defenseless after Fox denied it and implied that he's a liar who makes up fake mean Tweets about Fox's upstanding public relations professionals. He searched far and wide for a copy of the errant fear-raising publicity blast to prove that he's not, but to no avail. He wrote a mild blog post saying he could have sworn he got that e-mail, but in the face of such a strong denial from Fox, it didn't amount to much.

Then Barnhart remembered his GMail account and—lo and behold!—found the e-mail that Fox said it did not send him:

The e-mail, as you can see, was a "Fox Fan Scoop"—a newsletter sent out by the network to people stupid or lonely enough to describe themselves as "Fox fans." It's an important distinction, because Fox Fan Scoops can be perceived as on-the-record and thus legitimized as the network's official position on the subject of how the swine flu vaccine "scares the heck" out of Glenn Beck.

So when the anonymous Fox spokesperson said "we" never sent such an e-mail to Barnhart, was she talking about "we" the Fox News PR department, or "we" the network that the PR department actually represents?

"'We' as in the Fox News PR department," says Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti. "And Barnhart's blog post confirms that it did not come from the Fox News PR department." No, it just came from the part of Fox News that relates to the public by sending out e-mails to promote it's television shows. Again, it's an important distinction. Anyway, Aaron Barnhart—whom, by way of full disclosure, we know and like—is not a liar, and the anonymous Fox News flack who told the Huffington Post that "we" never sent the e-mail is.

Like tobacco in the early-'90s and health insurance today! They have released an important report on how health care reform will make everyone go bankrupt, and if you hear anyone mention this report on the TV or something, please just keep in mind that it is professional bullshit from professional bullshit artists.

No indication of the moon wobbling dangerously off its axis, starting an inexorable descent towards earth. No huge chunks of the moon breaking off, starting an inexorable descent towards earth. No angry aliens rising out of the moon's core in their battle crafts, starting an inexorable descent towards earth. No reason to call out the Army's top secret interstellar fighting force. In contrast to this direct quote from NASA's director of nerd propaganda, yesterday:

''This is going to be pretty cool,'' LCROSS project manager Dan Andrews told The Associated Press. ''We'll be going right down into it. Seeing the moon come up at you is pretty spectacular.''

Well. There was a helluva momentary gray shift. One area of the picture became a somewhat different shade of gray. So...it must have been crazy, if you were standing on the moon. In one of those known extraterrestrial civilizations.

Let's just shut down NASA and stick with Hollywood.

McCaughey first began lying in 1994, because she was bored. While working at a conservative think tank and conferring on the regular with the tobacco industry, McCaughey wrote a lengthy and incredibly misleading story about Bill Clinton's health care reform bill that Andrew Sullivan's New Republic happily printed, despite the fact that it was just full of lies.

Michelle Cottle just wrote a piece for Franklin Foer's newer, less annoying New Republic all about McCaughey, and while it doesn't go into the gritty details of how incredibly irresponsible Sullivan was as an editor back in the '90s, when TNR printed all sorts of bullshit for attention and to be provocative, it is satisfyingly mean to McCaughey.

After her lying article of lies became a series of false talking points repeated endlessly by Republicans (like friendly old Bob Dole), everyone noticed that this cheerfully dishonest ideologue was also a nice-looking blonde lady! A veteran Republican pol selected her as a running mate! You can imagine what happened next.

Celebrated for both her brains and beauty, she was declared a brave new model of feminist pol. (A glam-shot photo spread in Vanity Fair set the GOP abuzz, while the New York Post cheered her for having "Henry Kissinger's brains and Jessica Rabbit's body.") Even some of her academic quirkiness—her love of raw data and obsession with pie charts—conveyed a not-politics-as-usual freshness. Admittedly, there were bumps of the sort former Governor Palin could sympathize with: Anonymous Pataki staffers dropped quotes about the newbie candidate being unusually self-absorbed, and her frequent clashes with the veteran Pataki aide assigned to help her adjust to campaign life were downright operatic. (During one battle, McCaughey had her campaign van pull over on the side of a highway as she shrieked at the aide to get out.)

That's right: TNR just straight-up called Betsy McCaughey Sarah Palin. Damn.

Of course her political "career" ended in disaster because she's impossible to work with or for, and she rightfully faded back into obscurity at another conservative think tank. Until, weirdly, she came back with columns and op-eds and radio appearances and TV interviews in which she shamelessly lied about Barack Obama's health care plans, just this year! It is weird how that happens, right? How no one is ever so wrong that they're not allowed back on TV to be wrong some more, as long as they're useful to people with lots of money at stake?

This also means, of course, that Sarah Palin will never completely go away.

Sorry.

Also, from the New York Times:

American officials said that they had been tracking the covert project for years, but that Mr. Obama decided to disclose the American findings after Iran discovered, in recent weeks, that Western intelligence agencies had breached the secrecy surrounding the complex.

Surprise!

Onetwothreefourfivesix. Six emails in my inbox, from Tucker Max. Although none of them were anything worth writing home about. And then there was that time you wanted to challenge us to some bet about your movie, which caused Ian Spiegelman to unleash that epic, apoplectic rant, remember? That was funny.

Anyhow.

• "We made this movie for the same reason that we create all of our art; because we love it"
• "There is no number or level of success that would make me think, 'Wow, I didn't think that was possible.'"
• "My writing is authentic and whatever happens in my life is what I write about."
• "Now, I'm more like a smart missile."
• "We also wanted to make it feel realistic."
• "everyone just assumes it's going to be a success."