tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18638397744554264572024-03-14T00:33:13.828-07:00Vera CityAn abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normalvera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-26806119535806198282010-02-11T16:28:00.000-08:002010-02-17T18:18:50.196-08:00Letting Herself Go And Counting Backwards: With A Guest Appearance By Palin's Liquor Cabinet<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3Qy8TJegiI/AAAAAAAAAGs/P-zfGHlhwwg/s1600-h/800px-Sarah_Palin_Kuwait_4.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 262px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3Qy8TJegiI/AAAAAAAAAGs/P-zfGHlhwwg/s400/800px-Sarah_Palin_Kuwait_4.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437026661656592930" /></a>This is one of the most interesting pictures of Sarah Palin that I have found. It was taken by <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Sarah_Palin_Kuwait_4.jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sarah_Palin_Kuwait_4.jpg&usg=__YPMFF2Stsw05iAA48bL8MlNGQjk=&h=1312&w=2000&sz=1168&hl=en&start=3&sig2=BlaedB80OPPLAsIuAZS16A&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=a79ZVY6ihfA4qM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3DSpc.%2BWesley%2BLandrum%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1&ei=bbp5S7qZBdDg8QbMndXzCQ">Spc. Wesley Landrum</a> of the 50th Public Affairs Detachment on July 25, 2007 and posted the next day. This was during Palin's two day trip to Kuwait which, along with a few hour layover in - I believe - Amsterdam on the way home, constitutes her entire foreign travel experience. I found the picture while reviewing photos of her bust size for an <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2010/01/palin-propensity-for-padding.html">earlier post</a>. If you look at the <a href="http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=sarah%20palin%20kuwait&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi">other pictures</a> from this trip, when she knew she was going to be wearing t-shirts, she appears to have packed her enhancer brasserie. Although, to be fair, some of the bosom she is showing here was acquired honestly, with the extra pounds she seems to be carrying at the time.<div><br /></div><div>I thought of this picture yesterday, while I was looking at Kelly Anne Hanrahan's <a href="http://www.koolass.com/palin.html">series of pictures</a> of what Sarah Palin looks like without most of her makeup, hairstyles, and accessories, which has also been posted on <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/02/open-thread-sarah-palin-unmasked.html?dsq=33847168#comment-33847168">Palingates</a> this morning. The pictures that Hanrahan chose to work with mostly show Sarah Palin during the campaign. Before the current round of cosmetic surgery, but after, what many observers have noticed, work that was done earlier. It would be interesting to see what Palin would look like in the above picture if Hanrahan gave it the same treatment as the others. (I believe that several people would have to make an apology to Susan Boyle.) </div><div><br /></div><div>However, what really interests me about the above picture is the timing. You see, much to Sarah Palin's dismay, there are people who know how to count backwards, and I happen to be one of them. According to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2008-11/43179602.pdf">the letter</a> written by Palin's doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, dated on November 3, 2008 and released the evening before the election, "[Palin] had four term deliveries in 1989, 1990, 1994, and 2000, and one pre-term delivery at 35 weeks gestation in 2008." </div><div><br /></div><div>There are a number of questions that have been raised regarding this letter, and it has been noted that, in the sentence quoted above, Piper's year of birth is not correct. Less than a year ago, a blogger named Morgan, who did photo detective work, looked closely at this letter and noticed that there were a number of visual irregularities within it - including the fact that the margins of the text didn't line up, suggesting that the letter was manually cut and pasted together, and possibly altered, before it was released. (I cannot link to her blog, because it was taken down after she was seriously intimidated and threatened by Palin's supporters - she is not the only blogger that this has happened to. It would be interesting if anyone with her level of skill would look at this letter again.)</div><div><br /></div><div>As another aside, and to confirm the things you can find out by counting backwards, Track Palin, born April 20, 1989, is said to be a full-term baby in the letter. Full term <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy">is defined</a> as 37 to 42 weeks from the last menstrual period, LMP, (259 to 294 days). Conception, however, typically occurs two weeks after the LMP - thus the most likely window is 37 to 40 weeks. Pre-term is defined as 258 days or less. Sarah and Todd allegedly* eloped on August 29, 1988, assuming that 1989 wasn't a leap year, 234 days before Track was born. In order to be considered full term, as Dr. Baldwin-Johnson's letter states, Track's conception would most likely have occurred between July 13 to August 3, 1988. (Statistically the chance becomes less likely as we move out of the mid-July period.) There is also a reduced chance, this time less likely the earlier the date, that he could have been conceived between June 29 and July 12.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why is this important? Palin has a history of being anti-choice, although she has publicly mentioned that she has considered other options for herself. She has also actively promoted, along with her daughter Bristol - who gets paid to do so despite the glaring incongruence, abstinence before marriage. Given her own past and daughter's present situation, Palin's stance is extremely hypocritical. As a public spokesperson, and while an elected official, she has tried to limit other people's choices before and after a potential pregnancy. Abstinence only programs have been proven not to work and result in an increase of unmarried pregnancies, heartbreak, and hardship. </div><div><br /></div><div>Very few unmarried and unemployed women, who find themselves pregnant, have the option of calling up a boy they have been dating, who is working far away from them, and have him risk his life to come back and marry them. There is also very few unmarried and oddly ambiguous employed women who have the substantial family resources to relentlessly sue their nineteen year old former boyfriend, who was willing to marry them, for <a href="http://ca.eonline.com/uberblog/b166743_bristol_palin_erratic_levi_johnston_get.html?sid=twitterfeed_topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=twitterfeed&utm_campaign=twitterfeed_topstories">$1,750 per month child support</a> ($21,000 per year) based on a hypothetical income extrapolated from a probably temporary windfall of income. (His gross income before that being less then half of the support asked for.) In both cases: nice work, if you can get it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course these dates also help in <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/02/sarah-palin-todd-palin-track.html">this discussion</a>, which is justified given Sarah Palin's extensive use of her family and the myth of her family values as her brand. Not to mention, once again, the hypocrisy. Since Palin doesn't really have <a href="http://breepalin.blogspot.com/2010/02/mrs-palin-is-frightening.html">any policy positions that can be pinned down</a>, her myth making around her family is something that needs to be explored. Another part of Palin's brand is her <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/02/chuck-heath-sarah-palins-dad-videos.html">perceived honesty</a>, a shock for many when they realize that is how her fan base views her. This bit of cognitive disassociation on the part of her fans makes it imperative to explore the many contradictions, inconsistencies, and outright lies in Palin's life.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have, however, digressed from the above picture and we will now go back to counting backwards. Trig Palin's alleged birth date is April 18, 2008. The above doctor's letter states that he was born pre-term at 35 weeks gestation, which, I believe, means completed weeks. More precise then what we were working with Track. Counting backwards puts his conception in the week ending August 16, 2007. The above picture was taken on July 25, fifteen to twenty-two days before Palin would have become pregnant as she states she was.</div><div><br /></div><div>Compare this picture to all the ones <a href="http://www.palindeception.com/subpages/subpage1.html">during her pregnancy</a> that survived the scrubbing - when she was picked to run with John McCain - and the ones from her previous pregnancies. She looks more pregnant here, and similar to the her other pregnancies, than when she is stated to be pregnant with Trig - even though we know she can't be according to the above stated timeline. I am taking into account the discrepancies of her belly padding and, like Kelly Anne Hanrahan's series above, factoring out her belly padding accessories. After all, no baby <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2008/12/elan-frank-screenshots.html">gestrates as a rectangle</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Palin myth, however, is that the reason that she didn't show during the Trig pregnancy was because she didn't let herself go and she had very tight abs. First, let's state that - to anyone who knows anything about pregnancy - this story does not hold water. (The same holds true for her other <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah-palins-birth-story-work-in.html">hold-the-leaking-water-for-almost-twenty-four-hours-during-her-labour-story</a>.) Second, if you were going to try to tell me that someone has extremely fit and tight abs during a pregnancy, they should be fit directly before they conceive - which includes tight arms and chin. Looking at the above picture, this was definitely not the case. I will admit that, over the course of the alleged pregnancy, Sarah Palin appears to get fitter and miraculously smaller including her bust, if we take the Kuwait pictures as a reference point, as she does here five weeks before she gives birth.</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3SHQO01ymI/AAAAAAAAAG0/W5BZV_y4L38/s1600-h/parnell02.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 154px; height: 318px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3SHQO01ymI/AAAAAAAAAG0/W5BZV_y4L38/s400/parnell02.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437119363070413410" /></a><br /></div><div>The reduction of bust size is particularly of note given the following comment written over a year ago by Audrey, a lactation consultant, at <a href="http://www.palindeception.com/subpages/subpage1.html">PalinDeceptions</a>:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(48, 48, 48); line-height: 18px; font-family:tahoma, verdana, sans-serif;font-size:12px;">"As you examine these photos, screen shots, and videos here are some things to watch for. First, very significant to me as a lactation consultant is her total lack of breast change in any shots, even the ones after she LOOKS pregnant. This is often one of the first signs of pregnancy and one that is pretty much universal, even in women who don't show much. Governor Palin appears to me to be consistently small breasted throughout all of the images."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:tahoma, verdana, sans-serif;font-size:100%;color:#303030;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;font-size:12px;"><br /></span></span></div><div>(Since Audrey had been focusing on the period during Palin's alleged pregnancy - easily dated photographs which could be eliminated, such as the Kuwait series showing a bustier Palin - were not looked at closely or seen at the time she wrote her opening web pages.) </div><div><br /></div><div>I believe that the Kuwait picture above should be added to any time line of Palin's pregnancy as a reference point of how she looked directly before we are told she got pregnant with her tight abs. Perhaps, in addition, it should be posted any time one of those annoying troll commenters writes "I'll nail that" in response to a picture of Sarah Palin.</div><div><br /></div><div>* The reason I wrote alleged for the date that the Palins claim to have eloped is because there is no verification that they actually did on that day. The only reason we know the date is because they told us. By now, after so many fact checking posts on various blogs, we know that almost everything they say is untruthful. August 29, according to the story that Todd tells in the link above, is the first day they could tell a small community, who would know and remember when people are away, that they had been married. The community would have known that Todd was away for an extended period of time directly prior to that date. This may account for the odd tale, ironically - <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/02/sarah-palin-todd-palin-track.html">in Todd's version</a> - fish play a major role, of their elopement told in Going Rogue. </div><div><br /></div><div>In that account, they take their broke asses down to the courthouse (as, I believe, she describes her nuptials - please correct me if I am wrong). For some reason, they don't bother to bring anyone they know along, as if what they were doing was shameful and they had to be secretive about it. Because they needed two witnesses, they went across the street and wheeled two elderly residents, who didn't know them, back to the courthouse. Since the court records are sealed for another thirty years and the witnesses would have died soon afterwards, we have no way of verifying their story. </div><div><br /></div><div>There is one possibility. The first time Palin ran for mayor in 1996, her political allies - referred to as her 'liquor cabinet' - made a large fuss that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stein_(mayor)">John Stein</a>, the three term incumbent mayor with a degree in public administration, was not actually married to his second wife. (They also inferred that, because of his name, he was not Christian - he is Lutheran.) A marriage certificate was offered as proof and rejected because "[t]hey said, 'well you could have forged that.'"</div><div><br /></div><div>Palin is constantly stating that she is being treated by a double standard and she is - no one else would get away with what she does in such a blatant and clumsy manner. Perhaps she should be asked to produce her marriage certificate, just as John Stein felt compelled to do, along with other documents to prove what she says. The liquor cabinet, however, may have already told us, in the above quote, what to be careful of if such documents ever do surface.</div><div><br /></div>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-45808308022875375212010-02-07T09:55:00.000-08:002010-02-07T12:48:36.648-08:00Of Course You Know, This Means War<div style="text-align: center;"><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7G8RrZlwEQE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_GB&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7G8RrZlwEQE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_GB&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></div><div><br /></div><div>I have written many times about the <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2009/09/origins-of-what-we-know-about.html">psychopathy checklist</a> and made reference to how I believe that a strong argument can be made that Sarah Palin scores high on the checklist. The checklist is a continuum and to become a psychopath one must cross over a threshold. For men that the threshold for crossing is set at thirty out of a potential forty points. For women, because the condition manifest itself differently, that threshold is set lower. By the nineties, Robert Hare, after studying and rating psychopaths for decades, had only meet one who had a perfect score of forty. That was <a href="http://www.serialkillers.ca/clifford-robert-olson-jr/">Clifford Olson</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>The <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2010/01/word-salad-earlier-comments-on-sarah_11.html">checklist </a>is divided into two sections. Half are inherent traits that people can have - this is where the genetic component of the spectrum lies. The other half are lifestyle choices, to put a rather genteel term on what can turn out to be horrendous outcomes, and this is where the environmental factors play a significant role.</div><div><br /></div><div>So to recap: to be on the psychopathy checklist one needs to have certain traits that are intrinsic parts of the person's personality. These traits alone will not make you a psychopath or even close to the threshold. Many of the people born with these traits lead productive lives, but may appear slightly 'off' to the people close to them. However, to gain more points on the checklist - enough to move into the <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2009/09/show-me-numbers.html">zone of the ten percent of the population</a> who cause significant problems to those around them, but have not crossed the threshold, and for those that have crossed that line - requires certain life style choices to be made. Here is where environment, which includes flukes of fate, can result in someone crossing the threshold to being a true psychopath. </div><div><br /></div><div>No one is born a psychopath, they become one over time. It is a designation that is acquired over the course of a person's lifetime based on the actions taken. If one was inclined to think in certain terms, one could even describe it as a 'calling.' (Although I would argue that it is not a higher one, instead it is more similar to a siren's call.) The intrinsic (genetic) traits make it easier for the individual to move in the direction of making the checklist lifestyle choices and moving them up the checklist. Environment can either push them towards crossing the threshold or guide them away.</div><div><br /></div><div>As a society, we can choose to help these individuals not answer the siren's call to cross the threshold or achieve even high scores on the checklist. It means having strong boundaries for them and making sure that there are consequences when they cross those boundaries. Part of those boundaries that we need to maintain for them is the law. People on the checklist need to know that they will be held accountable. Research has shown that they do not respond to appeals to their emotions to do the right thing - they respond to consequences and repercussions (although they will always try to manipulate their way out if they can).</div><div><br /></div><div>As a society, we can also start to discuss the implications of this condition and how we humanely coexist with them. We need to ask ourselves if we should allow people who, by definition, exploit others and have no empathy, which makes them unaffected by others' suffering, to be in positions of power. There is plenty of historical precedent to show us that, when these individuals do obtain power, it does not end well.</div><div><br /></div><div>I can not definitively state whether Sarah Palin has crossed over the threshold of the checklist at this time. She is, however, on the road to do so, if the current course of events is left to go unchecked. Over the last year and a half, I have watched Sarah Palin opportunistically cruise on the crest of a perfect storm that has taken a small time grifter to potential and real positions of great power. </div><div><br /></div><div>Palin, when speaking, constantly uses the metaphor of <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/07/palin-willing-obama/">doors opening</a> and closing to her when she describes her opportunistic leaps. It is an apt description in this case. We must work to make sure that the door is closed to her, before she crosses an irrevocable threshold to the detriment of all of us.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S28mWV-2AII/AAAAAAAAAF8/WGt63Wsv6BE/s1600-h/24010425511af06153feb_1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S28mWV-2AII/AAAAAAAAAF8/WGt63Wsv6BE/s400/24010425511af06153feb_1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435605440559186050" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Photomontage by <a href="http://quazen.com/arts/visual-arts/the-extraordinary-anti-nazi-photomontages-of-john-heartfield/">John Heartfield</a></div></div>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-43933898255199171362010-01-14T13:24:00.000-08:002010-01-15T14:41:58.938-08:00The Ethics of Outing Secrets Within the Dysfunctional Family<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0-0WS0aNzI/AAAAAAAAAF0/m_trTViZ-30/s1600-h/In+Touch+cover.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 295px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0-0WS0aNzI/AAAAAAAAAF0/m_trTViZ-30/s400/In+Touch+cover.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426754371106518834" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">At Palingates, a commenter posted this response to the photo comparison of Track Palin:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"I'm not a troll, I've speculated along with the best of 'em here. But Vera City, if you want to build readership for your blog, is this really the way you want to do it? These photos have been posted before, the point has been made. In our wildest fantasies, if presented with irrefutable evidence, what would $ ever say? "I was young, I made bad choices, I married the man I thought was the father." Yeah, even that would be a lie, one more in a continuing series. But think about it, people: there is really only one person who stands to ever be hurt by this."</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family:georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">This is an appropriate question to ask about what is happening here and one that I have thought about. First off, to answer him/her, I do not think that they are a troll. I think that they are speaking from a place of concern and decency. To discuss the various aspects of Sarah Palin's lies, hypocrisy, and indiscretions will make people feel uncomfortable. It seems unseemly and almost indecent. This is the feeling that Palin and those similar to her count on to keep people from asking questions.</span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family:georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">However, when we don't ask questions and point out the lies, but instead stay quiet to not rock the boat, we are adding to the hell that those children are living in. </span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family:georgia, serif;font-size:16px;">Many people who feel strongly about Sarah Palin, or want to know more about personality disorders, have personal experience growing up with at least one family member who has a personality disorder. It is not a good experience and it is a long and difficult journey to recover from, if the person is ever able to do it. The effects of such a childhood have devastating consequences for the individual not just emotionally, but also inducing lasting health issues, which in extreme cases can severely shorten life expectancy. </span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Outside of the family situation itself, I believe that one of the more damaging aspects is having the child's reality denied because they are told that, "people aren't like that." How many of these children, when they have tried to describe what went on in their household have, rather then being believed, been told that they must be getting it wrong and that the perpetrator really loves them. This is especially damaging because it reinforces what the perpetrator is telling, often demanding, the child to believe. These children are punished within their family for telling the truth and, sadly, mostly disbelieved or dismissed when they tell someone outside. </div><div><br /></div><div>The closest equivalent to understand the horrible harm done to these children and their resulting difficulties with integration into normal society, is the work done with children who grew up in abusive cults.</div><div><br /></div><div>Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, Trig, and Tripp are growing up in an abusive environment where, because of their mother's power, they are forced to obey, lie, coverup and live under their mother's control. Their view of the world has been distorted. In the Vanity Fair article, Levi spoke of being stunned when Sarah referred to Trig as the retarded baby and that no one in the family reacted to it, because they were used to it. In this incident, what I noticed is that he was so offended, having come from a loving family, that he did what I described just now: he could only make sense of it by thinking that Sarah had a weird sense of humour. He downplayed and made an excuse for Sarah's cavalier, callous, abusive behaviour to her children. He could not acknowledge the reality of what he had witnessed because it was outside his experience of human behaviour. Sadly for the Palin children, and now his own child, it is their experience and they are trapped there.</div><div><br /></div><div>These children are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/15/the-trials-and-tribulatio_n_424741.html">troubled</a>. Their mother will never act in their best interests (or in their interest at all) instead she will demand that they lie to maintain the illusion that they are a happy family. Because that is what is good for Sarah - for now. And when they outlive their usefulness, she will discard them. They haven't just been thrown under the bus; they were born there.</div><div><br /></div><div>Right now Bristol is coming under a lot of criticism because of the custody case with Levi. I think that Levi appraisal of the matter is correct. He knows that Sarah is the one making Bristol do this. Bristol has very little choice. To expect her to stand up to her mother is to blame the victim. To judge Bristol on the same standards as we would expect someone with a normal upbringing is cruel. However, the environment that she is rising Tripp in is one of abuse, even though I am sure she is not knowingly abusing him herself. It is not in Tripp's best interest to be there.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here is where the blogs come in. Palin's lawyer argues that it would harm Tripp to read about the custody case when he is older. Why is that? Why will it harm Tripp to know that his father and paternal family wanted desperately to be part of his life. That they gave up opportunities and suffered to fight for him. The only people it will hurt is the Palins, who will be trying to turn Tripp against his father. If the Palins have their way, they will cut the Johnstons out of Tripp's life completely and convince him that they don't care for him. (That lie is unfolding throughout the court documents and the In Touch article.) If they succeed, they will estrange Tripp from the family that loves him. But when he is older and starts to question what is going on, the blogs can help lead him back to that family again. Think of the blogs as the white pebbles that Hansel drops as he and his sister are lead into the forest. It is a way for him to find his way home to his father.</div><div><br /></div><div>I believe, however, that the commenter above is referring to Track as the one person that stands to get hurt by finding out who his biological father is. If the photo comparisons, which seem to make a strong case that he is biologically related to the Menards, turns out to be true, what are the detrimental effects? Finding out that the well regarded family who came to your hockey games, took an active role as your godfather, intwined themselves into your life growing up did it because they considered you to be one of them. That Todd Palin, even though he probably knew, still brought you up as his son while allowing the other family to be part of your life. That you have four half siblings who can now be part of your life. That everyone no longer has to live a lie, but can acknowledge their relationship to you. </div><div><br /></div><div>There may be some anger and hurt at first, but in the long run I think Track comes out ahead. Secrets do horrible things to people. </div><div><br /></div><div>The person who I thought could be hurt by this is Carole Menard, Curtis Jr.'s wife. Because of the way she spoke to the author of Trailblazer, I am not sure that she knew the possible relationship between her husband and his godson. There could be a few painful memories and realizations that could surface. Although I would fully support her decision if she decided to not have Sarah Palin in her life, I think that she would accept Track and have a better understanding of her husband. After all, it seems that he had a strong sense of responsibility and cared for the welfare of children. He seemed to be a decent human being who very briefly was caught up with a manipulative person, but didn't back away from the consequences. I think she will be able to forgive.</div><div><br /></div><div>If eventually Tripp or any of the Palin children read this, I want you to know that you are not alone. There are many people who understand what you are going through and feel for you.</div>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-75309279889611899532010-01-11T17:30:00.000-08:002010-01-11T19:52:55.715-08:00Word Salad - Earlier Comments on Sarah Palin's Peculiar Way of Speaking<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0vNtETv-WI/AAAAAAAAAFM/W3DDqC4v8mo/s1600-h/images-6_2.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 127px; height: 124px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0vNtETv-WI/AAAAAAAAAFM/W3DDqC4v8mo/s400/images-6_2.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425656350232279394" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Yesterday on </span></span><a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2010/01/steve-schmidt-on-60-minutes-complete.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">60 Minutes</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, Steve Schmidt said that, during the preparation for the vice-president debate, Palin had a speech tic where she put together Joe Biden's name along with Barack Obama's and kept referring to him as O'Biden. NJfan asked me what I thought about this quirk of speech. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">For now I am going to repost a few comments that I made at <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/">Palin's Deceptions</a> after Palin announced that she was quitting as governor. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">For those of you who do not know, Audrey wrote the excellent blog about the problems with the alleged birth of Palin's fifth child Trig. Audrey, a Republican when she started the blog, originally wanted to correct the media because she felt they had incorrectly reported the circumstances around the birth, but discovered they had the story straight from Palin herself. For those who like detective stories, the blog shows the detailed unravelling of the lies that Sarah Palin maintained around the birth. As you read through the comments, you can see people coming together to figure out what is going on. You can also see the evolution in people's thought regarding Palin.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Audrey's last post was on August 19, 2009. She stopped posting after that because she had received serious, detailed threats to her and her family by Palin supporters. This was not the first blog shut down by personal threats. Earlier in the summer, a woman named Morgan (not the moderator for Audrey's site), who was skilled in doing photo detective work, pulled her blog down after receiving similar threats. The work she did was excellent and provided the photographic proof that Palin, barring a miraculous 'virgin' birth, could not have physically been pregnant.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Audrey had certain rules about what could be discussed on her blog and the comments were moderated. Theories about incest were not allowed, as well as putting forward any psychological explanation for why Palin was doing what she did. I found her blog soon after she started it and followed the story without commenting because my area of expertise fell outside of her guidelines. In July 2009, less then a month before she was shut down, I noticed that people were beginning to question Palin's mental state - opening the way for me to start posting. Here are four of my first comments which covers Sarah being on the psychopathy checklist, the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths, and how psychopaths communicate.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">[I am including the date and time I posted the comments so you can go back and see the context of the discussion if you like.]</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:medium;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">July 21 4:47 pm - <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-on-who-are-these-folks_15.html">More On......Who Are These Folks</a></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> - Further, it keeps us from inflammatory rhetoric, e.g. KaJo calling her a psychopath -- which she is not. -</span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Joe Christmas - July 19 - 8:21 PM</span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Joe, I am going to have to take issue with your statement above, because you say it with such authority. I believe that you said you were a doctor and your mother is a narcissist, which could give you some information on personality disorders but doesn't mean that you are up to date with the research that has emerged over the last ten to twenty years in the field studying psychopathy. Referring to it as "inflammatory rhetoric" tells me that this is not an area of expertise for you. </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I have spent a large part of the last ten years reading, learning and observing personality disorders, particularly psychopathy with a special interest in how it manifests in women. On a part-time basis, I work with people who have been impacted by psychopaths. As part of that service, I explain to them how psychopaths operate and how to tell them apart from narcissists and people with environmentally caused anti social disorder. Within that context, I use Sarah Palin as an example of a woman scoring high on the psychopathic checklist.</span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Psychopathic Checklist is the gold standard used by serious researchers in the field to determine who in fact is a psychopath. It was developed by the Canadian professor Robert Hare, who also advises and trains the FBI. There are twenty items on the checklist - half are intrinsic characteristics to who the person is while the other half are how these characteristics play out in lifestyle choices. These items include;</span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">being glib and superficial </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">egocentric and grandiose </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">lack of remorse or guilt </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">lack of empathy </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">deceitful and manipulative </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">having shallow emotions </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">being impulsive </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">poor behaviour controls </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">having a need for excitement </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">lack of responsibility </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">early behaviour problems </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">and displaying anti-social behaviour</span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">How does the above list not describe SP's behaviour? When you look more closely at how the traits are commonly displayed by people on the checklist, the match up with what we know about SP is even more striking. Many people who score high on the checklist are thought to be narcissists because narcissistic traits are part of being a psychopath. If, however, we look at occurrences levels in the population we find that only .67 of one percent of the population are narcissists while the rate of people who cross the threshold of the checklist to be full fledge psychopaths are one to three percent of the population. More importantly, another ten percent of the population fall just below the threshold but have enough of the traits to do serious harm to others.</span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">To answer the other commenter's question - research has disclosed that the critical traits, such as lack of empathy, needed to be diagnosed as a psychopath are due to faulty wiring in the brain. Some of it is heritable, although it can occur spontaneously. Certain head injuries can also create the damage to the brain with the same effect. Environment does play a huge role on how these tendencies caused by miss-wiring in the brain manifest themselves over a person's life span. </span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 18px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If you are interested, I will tell you about the research that shows that SP's word salads are typical for a psychopath.</span></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">July 23 2:06 pm - </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-on-who-are-these-folks_15.html">More On......Who Are These Folks</a></span></span></span></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Wayofpeace and Ivyfree, before I talk about the word salad I want to address some other points that came up. KaJo, I understand your desire to be quoted correctly. In this case, it highlights the confusion between the two words psychopath and sociopath. It is one of the most frequent questions I am asked. The two words are interchangeable and mean the same thing - almost. The difference, in current use, is the belief of the person using each term on what causes the disorder. Dr. Hare explains:</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"In many cases the choice of term reflects the user's views on the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">origins and determinants </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">of the clinical syndrome or disorder described in this book [Without Conscience]. Thus, some clinicians and researchers - as well as most sociologists and criminologists - who believe that the syndrome is forged entirely by social forces and early experiences prefer the term </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">socio</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">path, whereas those - including this writer - who feel that psychological, biological, and genetic factors also contribute to the development of the syndrome generally use the term </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">psycho</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">path. The same individual therefore could be diagnosed as a sociopath by one expert and as a psychopath by another."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">That was written in 1993: the body of solid research showing significant genetic and biological differences between people on the psychopathic spectrum and the general population has grown substantially since then. When KaJo wrote sociopath, I also switched it to the term I use which is psychopath. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Joe Christmas, if you read what I wrote carefully, you will notice that I did not call SP a psychopath. I stated that she is high on the Psychopathic Checklist. I tend to err on the cautious side when I am looking at an individual. The checklist is a spectrum with a threshold that can be crossed at any period in the person's life to get the diagnosis of psychopath. It was developed by studying male convicts so the diagnosis is weighted to their behaviour. Researchers, however, found that there are important gender differences on how the traits manifest in women. For example: women will display more aggressive, controlling and abusive behaviour towards family members, partners and people close to them, such as ex in-laws, while males will strike out towards strangers as well. Men are also more likely to use physical aggression while the women tend to use psychological manipulation. Because the women's behaviour is more often directed towards people they know, it is less reported and less noticed by others. (After all, it was only SP's ambition to play on the big stage that brought her and her behaviour to our attention.) Because of these and other factors, the threshold for a woman to cross to be a psychopath is actually lower than it is for men. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Where people can quibble if SP passes the threshold or not, it is a strong position to argue that she scores high on the checklist. It is not a binary diagnosis that a person is either a psychopath or not a psychopath. It is a scale where those who fall just below the threshold can do incredible damage and their suitability to hold public office or parent should be seriously questioned.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Joe, you made a good call when you pointed out SP's obliviousness to Trig's tears. It is the complete lack of empathy and concern for the feelings of others that defines the faulty wiring of this disorder.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A few starting points on SP's word salads. Keep her in mind as you read these passages from Hare:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"...pathological lying and manipulation are not restricted to psychopaths. What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out. But there is something else about the speech patterns of psychopaths that is equally puzzling: their frequent use of contradictory and logically inconsistent statements that usually escape detection. Recent research on the language of psychopaths provides us with some important clues to this puzzle, as well as to the uncanny ability psychopaths have to move words - and people - around so easily."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"Think about this for a moment - not only lies but several contradictory statements in the same breath. Very perplexing. It is as if psychopaths sometimes have difficulty in monitoring their own speech, and they let loose with a convoluted barrage of poorly connected words and thoughts. Psychopaths also sometimes put words together in strange ways."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">More soon.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">July 27 3:20 - <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2009/07/exit-stage-right.html">Exit Stage Right</a> also posted July 26 8:00 pm A tale of two birth certificates</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I have just finished watching Palin's good-bye salad from the position of governor. Over at Mudflats, many of the commentators mentioned how much she was using her hands. Since most of you have also watched it and it is still fresh in your minds, I will turn to Robert Hare who advises us, when we think that we are dealing with someone high on the Psychopathy Checklist, to "watch their hands." Hare tells us:</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"Most language-related hand gestures convey no information or meaning to the listener. 'Empty' hand gestures called </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">beats </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">are small, rapid movements that occur only during speech or pauses in speech but are not part of the 'story line.' Like other gestures and body movements, they are often part of the 'show' the speaker puts on .... But beats occur for other reasons as well. For example, many people make these hand gestures while talking on the telephone. The listener can't see these gestures, so why does the speaker make them?</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"The answer may be related to evidence that the brain centres that control speech also control the hand gestures made during speech. In some unknown way - perhaps by increasing overall activity in these centres - beats seem to facilitate speech: they help us put our thoughts and feelings into words.......In some cases, a high rate of beat gestures appear to reflect difficulty in converting thoughts and feelings into speech.</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"Beats may also tell us something about the size of the 'thought units,' or mental packages, that underlie speech. A thought unit can vary from from something small, simple, and isolated - a single idea or word, a phrase, a sentence - to something larger and more complex - groups of ideas, sentences, or complete story lines. The ideas, words, phrases, and sentences that comprise large thought units are likely to be well integrated, tied together in some meaningful, consistent, or logical fashion to form a script. Beats appear to 'mark off' these thought units: The greater the number of beats, the smaller the units.</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"Recent evidence suggests that psychopaths use more beats than do normal people, particularly when they talk about things generally considered </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">emotional </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">- for example, describing the way they feel about family members or other 'loved ones.' We might infer two things from this evidence:</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">" - Like a tourist using high-school French to ask directions in Paris, psychopaths have trouble putting into words emotional ideas because they are vague and poorly understood. In this sense, emotion is like a second language to the psychopath.</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">" - Psychopaths' thoughts and ideas are organized into rather small mental packages and readily moved around. This can be a distinct advantage when it comes to lying. As psychologist Paul Ekman pointed out, skilled liars are able to break down ideas, concepts, and language into basic components and then recombine them in a variety of ways, almost as if they were playing Scrabble. But in doing so, the psychopath endangers his overall script; it may lose its unifying structure or become less coherent and integrated than if he was dealing in large thought units."</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hmmm...seems to describe the video I just watched with the frequent rapid hand movements made by Sarah Palin.</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Joe Christmas, you asked me several good questions in the last post and I will try to get to them. I have a deadline for the end of the month, so I will pick up where I can.</span></span></span></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">July 27 3:20 pm - <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2009/07/exit-stage-right.html">Exit Stage Right</a> also posted July 27 8:03 am A tale of two birth certificates</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Mudflats has just put out a <a href="http://www.themudflats.net/2009/07/27/palins-farewell-address-full-transcript/">transcript of Sarah Palin's farewell address</a>. The reading is a pretty tough slog, according to the comments, because of the loose grammar, tangential connections, and lack of logic. Perhaps it would be enlightening to do a comparison. Once again we turn to Dr. Hare:</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"It now appears that the communications of psychopaths sometimes are subtly odd and part of a general tendency to 'go off track.' That is, they frequently change topics, go off on irrelevant tangents, and fail to connect phrases and sentences in a straightforward manner. The story line, though somewhat disjointed, may seem acceptable to the casual listener. For example, one of our male psychopaths, asked by a female interviewer to describe an intense emotional event, responded as follows:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"'</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Well, that's a tough one. So many to think about. I remember once - uh - I went through this red light and there was no traffic, right? So what's the big deal? This cop started to hassle me for no reason, and he really pissed me off. I didn't really go through the red light. It was probably only yellow ... so what was his - uh - point? The trouble with cops is they are - most are on a power trip. They act macho, right? I'm not really into macho. I'm more of a lover. What do you think? I mean, if I wasn't in prison ... say we meet at a party - uh - and I asked you out, and, I'll bet you'd say yes, right?'</span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"This narrative was accompanied by expansive hand movements and exaggerated facial expressions - a dramatic display that blinded the interviewer to what was happening. However,the videotape of the interview clearly revealed to everyone - including our embarrassed interviewer - that the man not only had gone off track but had trapped her in a flirtatious exchange.</span></span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"Psychopaths are notorious for not answering the question posed to them or for answering in a way that seems unresponsive to the question. For example, one psychopath in our research, asked if his moods went up and down, replied, '</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Uh - up and down? - well, you know - some people say they are always nervous but sometimes they seem pretty calm. I guess their moods go up and down. I remember once - uh - I was feeling low and - my buddy came over and we watched the game on TV and - uh - we had a bet on and he won - and I felt pretty shitty.'</span></i></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"Psychopaths also sometimes make it difficult for their listeners to understand parts of their narrative. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">'I met these guys in a bar. One guy was a dealer and the other was a pimp. They started to hassle me and I punched him out,' </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">said one of our psychopaths. But was it the dealer or the pimp who was 'punched out'?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"Of course, minor breakdowns in communications are not uncommon in normal people; in many cases they represent little more then carelessness or a momentary lapse in concentration. But in psychopaths the breakdowns are more frequent, more serious, and possibly indicative of an underlying condition in which the organization of mental activity - but not its content - is defective. It is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">how </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">they string together words and sentences together, not </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">what </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">they actually say, that suggests abnormality."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">This shows up not just yesterday and in the quitter stream of consciousness she spewed out on July 3, but also in the interviews she did while running as VP. "In what way, Charlie?" was her response to straight forward questions. It has also been the way she has talked about Trig's birth and failed to respond to enquiries about it.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Yet more on language to come.</span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></i></div></div><div><br /></div></span></div>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-60288929777808932762010-01-09T18:59:00.000-08:002010-01-09T19:00:14.264-08:00The Palin Propensity for Padding<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This is the third in my unintended series on Sarah Palin's clumsy attempts to pad bodies and the truth. (The first two on the </span></span><a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2009/08/gusty-photo-when-was-it-taken.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">'pregnant' Sarah</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> and the </span></span><a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2010/01/mysterious-case-of-bolster-bosom.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">over endowed Bristol</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> are here.) Although this is a small insignificant point in the overall scheme of Palin's arrogance and deceit, it is the small points that can sometimes tell us so much about the character of who we are dealing with. I felt, when I looked at the picture of Sarah Palin 'running' in Hawaii, that there was a whiff of "I dare you" directed towards anyone who would mention that the empress is wearing no clothes or, in this case, padding her rather non existing assets.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There are many things that Sarah Palin pads (her hair, achievements, and book, as examples) but this is perhaps the most taboo subject to bring up.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0ZDf07jCII/AAAAAAAAAEU/4iLFolTp34M/s1600-h/fp_4226595_palin_sarah_excl_lac_121609-460x334.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 290px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0ZDf07jCII/AAAAAAAAAEU/4iLFolTp34M/s400/fp_4226595_palin_sarah_excl_lac_121609-460x334.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424097015277750402" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">On the beach, with a curve no where in sight. Notice that the word ARMY printed across her chest is easy to read and not distorted by her breasts. Here she looks as endowed as Todd.</span></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0ZDfpWWw_I/AAAAAAAAAEM/VI4543w4JHE/s1600-h/fp_4226598_palin_sarah_excl_lac_121609-334x460.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 290px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0ZDfpWWw_I/AAAAAAAAAEM/VI4543w4JHE/s400/fp_4226598_palin_sarah_excl_lac_121609-334x460.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424097012168967154" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Stan</span>ding up with a body that almost mirrors Piper's, including the swell of belly over the shorts. The abs of steel are a thing of the past here.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0ZDfc7FVdI/AAAAAAAAAEE/-duFrTyHIp4/s1600-h/sarah-palin-cellulite-copy.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 307px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0ZDfc7FVdI/AAAAAAAAAEE/-duFrTyHIp4/s400/sarah-palin-cellulite-copy.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424097008833353170" /></a>One or two days later, still in Hawaii and in response to <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><a href="http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2009/12/you-can-run-sarah-but-you-cannot-hide.html#links"><span style="color: rgb(82, 28, 141); color:#521c8d;"><u>Gryphen's post</u></span></a></span> about her not having runner's legs, Sarah appears on the track. Failed liposuction notwithstanding, notice the sudden fullness of her "breasts." Within a day Sarah Palin has gone from an A cup to a C through the help of a rather good and, I believe, quite expensive bra.<br /><br />As enjoyable as it is to get a few comments in on Sarah Palin's looks, that is not what struck me about the events surrounding these pictures. On all three days that Palin was in Hawaii last month, she knew she was being photographed and was responding to the press and bloggers commentary as it was happening. By the time that she donned her running shoes and a bra so padded that it could probably stop bullets, appearing for an obviously staged photo opportunity, she knew that there were comparison pictures from the day before.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">So why would she risk drawing attention to the fact that she regularly pads her body to have people believe that it is something that it is not? </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">My first question is why are her breasts so obviously different from one moment to the next. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">After doing a review of pictures of Palin, it became apparent that her breast size shifts depending on what she is wearing, but not when your expecting it to. The period when she was supposedly pregnant with Trig, when most women breasts noticeable swell one or two cup sizes, her breasts did not register as being any larger then before or afterwards. (Actually they are smaller, it must be her amazingly tight pec muscles.) Perhaps she felt she could only pad one part of her body at a time. By going back further to pictures of the younger, heavier Sarah, before she started excessive dieting, she did tip the scale into a B cup. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">(We should assume that any photos where her breasts appear any larger are because of padding.)</span></span> It appears that Palin is seesawing between two body ideals - neither of which are her natural body type</span></span>.<div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0eOQhfuppI/AAAAAAAAAEc/r0MgCZwGb-Q/s1600-h/sarah-palin-going-rogue-virgina.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0eOQhfuppI/AAAAAAAAAEc/r0MgCZwGb-Q/s400/sarah-palin-going-rogue-virgina.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424460690711553682" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:medium;"><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /><br /><br />Here Palin has achieved the model svelte look, only after years of struggle, plastic surgery, and a restricted intake of diet Dr. Pepper, Red Bulls and lattes to get there. Although you can see that her face is fighting cheek and jowl (and double chin) to revert to it's natural shape. This is the tiny starlet body that she went on about when she attacked Ashley Judd and the anti wolf hunting ad, but obviously the body she wanted for herself. This is a body that looks good in clothes, if you knew how to dress yourself.<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica, serif;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">(And, now that we have seen the Hawaii pictures, keeping her body covered is a necessity to maintain any illusion of attractiveness.) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:georgia, serif;">Since we know the real answer to Katie Couric's question of what does Sarah Palin read is <a href="http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2010/01/sarah-palins-perpetual-problem-with.html">fashion and gossip magazines</a>, this is the body that is the media conscious woman's ideal. What it took to get Palin's naturally heavy legs this thin makes me shudder. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Nevertheless, we should give credit where it is due: this is the only incident that I can see that Palin has shown discipline to achieve a goal. If Going Rogue was a more truthful book, the thinning of Sarah would have been given an entire chapter or two. This physical transformation (or, more accurate, eating disorder) should not be underestimated as a significant reason why the women in her base admire her. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0fdGORw7tI/AAAAAAAAAEk/p-Z6MCqTp54/s1600-h/sarah_palin_5.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 322px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0fdGORw7tI/AAAAAAAAAEk/p-Z6MCqTp54/s400/sarah_palin_5.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424547375172611794" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />A flat chested Sarah, however, doesn't cut it with the people behind her real raise to power : conservative men who want starbursts. So the same folks that think that <a href="http://punditkitchen.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/political-pictures-ann-coulter-milf.jpg">Ann</a> <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://s11.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/d/z/dzu2tgnyjsc9t2nd.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.whosdatedwho.com/news/story_view.asp%3FID%3D25327&usg=__hggYjOxLQv4jpmWiKtaUxlizjrw=&h=458&w=344&sz=44&hl=en&start=295&sig2=VqA4Oa9HNrn6Wkxv6XeThg&um=1&tbnid=N0vjpA5MjbxWHM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3DAnn%2Bcoulter%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D280%26um%3D1&ei=mNhIS4rsOIvj8AbwmJSKAw">Coulter</a> is sexy, have elevated Palin into a fantasy figure. This works because Palin herself is so deep into fantasy that she won't correct them as long as she deems it to be flattering to her ego. Thus when she was being punked by the Canadian comics, pretending to be Nicolas Sarkozy the President of France, who were telling her they liked her in the Hustler produced porn movie <a href="http://boingboing.net/2008/10/02/hustler-producing-sa.html">Nailin Paylin</a> all she did was giggle and, I believe, accept the compliment. (Interestingly, the movie includes a segment with "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">a younger Palin getting seduced by her college creationist professor who 'will explain a "big bang" theory even she can’t deny!' " Having not seen the movie, I wonder if that 'younger Palin' is a daughter or <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;">Sarah trying to make a grade during one of her many attempts of going through college. Either way, unlike Palin creating media attention with her accusations that people wanted to rape her daughters, she was hypercritically silent about this film and other porn references to herself.)</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0jgZHEt9II/AAAAAAAAAE0/tpMqg2Oetjg/s1600-h/TSlingeriephotoshop.PNG.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 331px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0jgZHEt9II/AAAAAAAAAE0/tpMqg2Oetjg/s400/TSlingeriephotoshop.PNG.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424832473167950978" /></a><br />When I googled a search for images of Sarah Palin, it suggested, without prompting, 'Sarah Palin breasts.' Almost all these images were photoshopped with her head on a much more buxom body - like the one shown above, with the pink top and the ruler naughtly held in her hands. The other example, directly above, was screen captured by <a href="http://breepalin.blogspot.com/2009/12/mrs-palins-style-review-or-happy-new.html">Bree Palin</a> from Sarah Palin's facebook account, posted by a smitten fan for their Christmas eve enjoyment.</span></span></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:medium;"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">This is part of the stunning delusion that Sarah Palin is exceptionally attractive and sexy beyond belief. Another google suggested search was 'Sarah Palin breast size.' Here various sites speculate, or put forth as fact, that she at least a </span></span><a href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Sarah_Palin's_bra_size"><span style="color: rgb(82, 28, 141); color:#521c8d;"><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">34C cup</span></span></u></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.chacha.com/question/what-is-sarah-palin.s-bra-size"><span style="color: rgb(82, 28, 141); color:#521c8d;"><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">ranging up</span></span></u></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> to a </span></span><a href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_bristol_palin's_bra_size"><span style="color: rgb(82, 28, 141); color:#521c8d;"><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">34DD while pregnant</span></span></u></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (really show me the pictures) and even a </span></span><a href="http://www.chacha.com/question/how-big-are-sarah-palin's-breasts"><span style="color: rgb(82, 28, 141); color:#521c8d;"><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">non-pregnant 32 DDD</span></span></u></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. Look again at the first, second, and fourth pictures in this post and see if you can reconcile what you see with what these people believe. Delusional thinking about charismatic cult leaders is a fascinating topic which we can pursue later, but, for now, I will leave you with the observation that during the Third Reich, people thought that <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/12/14/svHITLER_wideweb__470x308,0.jpg">Hitler</a> was one of the <a href="http://www.hyscience.com/hitler%20youth.jpg">sexiest</a> men alive.</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">We come back to my original question about the jogging picture above - how did Palin think that she could get away with such an obvious change in her cup size from one day to another while being under scrutiny by the media and bloggers? Why would she do this when there were so many questions already being asked about her padding other parts of <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2009/08/gusty-photo-when-was-it-taken.html">her</a> and <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2010/01/mysterious-case-of-bolster-bosom.html">her daughter's</a> bodies? Frankly, I don't think that she gave it a moment's thought. By this point, Palin has got away with so much lying and distorting of the truth that she doesn't even think about it any more. She tells people what her unfiltered reality is and expects to be followed and not questioned. On the days that she increases her bra size by several cups, she expects us to overlook the inconsistency and accept that that is her body and she is one sexy MILF. </span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The defiance, confidence, and outright arrogance she shows here comes from a lack of social emotions to moderate her behaviour, which has been linked to the amygadala damage in people on the psychopath checklist. Glibness is one of the defining traits on the checklist. If they are caught in a lie, instead of feeling shame, guilt or remorse, they will almost effortlessly slide into another lie to explain it away or they feign victimhood, while at the same time attacking the person who pointed it out. Palin is confident that no one will mention her once-again shifting body, and, if any one tries, she and her followers' pattern has been to deflect it in two ways. The first is to call the person(mostly men) sexist for saying it. The second (usually directed towards women) is to say that the person is jealous of Palin. This is usually combined with personal attacks on the person's weight, looks, sexual attractiveness, social status, inclination to wear pyjamas, etc. This is a sleight of hand technique which never truly answers the issues that are raised, but instead deflects into a diversion or an attack. You will notice that when Sarah Palin does this there is no hint of embarrassment, another social emotion. </span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0kSUy1S6yI/AAAAAAAAAE8/mNp8TJruoxs/s1600-h/Sarah_Palin_runners_world-1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 347px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0kSUy1S6yI/AAAAAAAAAE8/mNp8TJruoxs/s400/Sarah_Palin_runners_world-1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424887374596467490" /></a><br /></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />She also displays no shame when accusing people of doing the very things that she does herself. This is a common feature of people on the checklist. By projecting their behaviour onto others, they manage to stop the discussion of what they are in fact doing themselves. For example, when a less busty Palin posed for Runner's World she was obviously pandering to her male fantasy followers. (What else does this pose suggest?) However, when Newsweek sourced the same photo for its cover, which subtly drew attention to what Palin was doing, they were called sexist by Palin and her followers. I am not sure if they changed the charge to sexual jealousy when it was revealed that the photo was chosen by two women. (By the way, Sarah, isn't it sexist to suggest that women who question you are jealous, sexual or otherwise? And are you not showing jealous behaviour, quite sexual in fact, when your reaction to a man, who is not enthralled to your winking, flirtatious behaviour, is to berate him?) </span></span></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;">Manipulatively using sex or the allure of sex to get what they want is another trait of women on the psychopathy checklist. As is glibly claiming innocence when they are called on doing it.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;">So, Sarah, am I sexist or sexually jealous of you? I am waiting for your response.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div></span></span></div></span><div><br /></div></div></div>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-33064703067256874982010-01-04T21:45:00.000-08:002010-01-04T22:08:11.154-08:00Environment vs. Wiring - a Response<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0LXRZGwdPI/AAAAAAAAAD8/bLPNGqT2gFY/s1600-h/hs-2009-25-l-large_web.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 393px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0LXRZGwdPI/AAAAAAAAAD8/bLPNGqT2gFY/s400/hs-2009-25-l-large_web.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423133595104474354" /></a><br />Environment does play an important part in dysfunctional families. It also can be pivitol whether someone on the psychopathy checklist progresses across the threshold to being a full blown psychopath. However, with the research that is currently being done, it appears that a precondition of being on the list is a miswiring of the brain and its ability to have empathy. There are people who are destructive individuals through environment alone, but they are not on the checklist (they fall in the broader catagory of anti-social personality disorder). <br /><br />Checklist behaviour can also result from brain injury or tumours. The first important observation of of this was the case of a railroad dynamite tamper named Gage who had an iron rod blown through his head, but managed to pick himself up and appeared, miraculously, to escape serious injury. What was noted is that his behaviour completely changed from being a careful, conscientious family man and reliable employee to a shiftless, violent individual who left his family and became penniless. A more recent case may be the man who abducted the young girl and kept her in his backyard while he fathered two children with her. As reprehensible as his behaviour is, reports from family and people who knew him growing up indicated that his behaviour changed radically after he had a motorcycle accident. Although both men, after their accidents, would score high on the checklist, they are recognized as being something other then psychopaths. I believe that researchers have referred to it as injury induced psychopathy. (It is interesting to note that a high percentage of homeless men have been found to have suffered, at one point or another, from head injuries. Although different injuries will affect different parts of the brain and produce variable disfunction. Many others are the victims of extreme abuse including sexual.) <br /><br />An over reliance on environmental causes for mental illness has double victimized families that are already under incredible strain. It wasn't until the nineties that North America began to stop claiming that autism was caused exclusively by frigid mothering and began acknowledging that their were organic causes to the disorder. Think about that for a minute: mothers who had special needs children were told that their child's problems were caused solely by their own inadequate mothering. That fits into my definition of cruelty and influences my criticism of psychology when it is reluctant to give up cherished theories and apply more up to date information on how the mind works. <br /><br />The term sociopath, which is essentially the same as psychopath, is usually used by people who believe that the behaviour is more narrowly caused by environmental factors. This was my criticism of Martha Stout's book. And yes, the home life of a psychopath has a higher than average chance of being dysfunctional. One reason for this is that the miswiring is a heritable condition making it likely that at least one of the parents could be on the checklist and, as we see with the example of Sarah Palin, they make appalling parents. It is also quite likely that other siblings and relatives would have the miswiring as well - making the entire family toxic. But, even in cases where the rest of the family members are unaffected by the wiring glitch, we can not discount the effect that a budding psychopathic child will have on his home life. There are many people who read this blog who can testify to this from their own personal experience.<br /><br />lilylake, the reason the checklist was developed in the first place was because of the utter lack of consistency in the research being done on psychopathy up to that point. Everyone was defining psychopaths differently, based on their personal beliefs, which made the results inconsistent and unusable. The checklist has been in place now for over two and a half decades and has lead to a greater understanding of what the problems and causes are for this condition as well as a better understanding of how to best treat them. That is one of the reasons that people with known injury induced psychopathic behaviour or environmentally caused anti-social behaviour are not included in the classification to keep the research as clear as possible.<br /><br />I would suggest you may want to read Steven Pinker's excellent book The Blank Slate to have a better understanding on the origins of the nature vs. nurture debate. Like all of Pinker's books,it is fascinating on a number of levels.vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-37547378056334020052010-01-04T18:32:00.000-08:002010-02-22T15:18:20.598-08:00The Mysterious Case of The Bolster Bosom<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KnP2xkl5I/AAAAAAAAADs/CciW8DQCiiE/s1600-h/images-1.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 135px; height: 98px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KnP2xkl5I/AAAAAAAAADs/CciW8DQCiiE/s400/images-1.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423080792150808466" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KnPiBUFeI/AAAAAAAAADk/iKOQk_KEGGE/s1600-h/images-2.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 123px; height: 135px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KnPiBUFeI/AAAAAAAAADk/iKOQk_KEGGE/s400/images-2.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423080786579690978" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KnPaYHYuI/AAAAAAAAADc/24OuFi1lerE/s1600-h/images-3.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 131px; height: 98px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KnPaYHYuI/AAAAAAAAADc/24OuFi1lerE/s400/images-3.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423080784527844066" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KmuxAeYtI/AAAAAAAAADU/ZXL272Y7KLQ/s1600-h/lopsided.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KmuxAeYtI/AAAAAAAAADU/ZXL272Y7KLQ/s400/lopsided.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423080223667020498" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KlXnIfzJI/AAAAAAAAADM/GvY8zE8xr4s/s1600-h/images.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 100px; height: 141px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KlXnIfzJI/AAAAAAAAADM/GvY8zE8xr4s/s400/images.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423078726367693970" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KlXWpgjNI/AAAAAAAAADE/yJKnSveB1sQ/s1600-h/bristolrnc1764649.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 254px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KlXWpgjNI/AAAAAAAAADE/yJKnSveB1sQ/s400/bristolrnc1764649.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423078721942752466" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />I wrote this, but never posted it, on August 18, 2009 while considering the significance of Bristol being stuffed at the RNC:<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. - Sherlock Holmes<br /></span><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Prologue</span><br /><br />I have had some experience figuring out the scams of people high on the psychopathy checklist, a task requiring working out their logic and thought processes which are different from what normal people do. Once you get the hang of it, psychopaths are highly predictable. Sarah Palin has yet to surprise me. (My hunch is we should soon be prepared for the unveiling of a cosmetically enhanced Sarah Palin, paid for by PAC money and/or her book advance - money that she couldn't use until she resigned as governor and quickly dropped from sight. Why have policy positions when you can run on facelifts, body sculpting of her rather stocky legs, and breast enhancements?)<br /><br />But it is different breast enhancement that we are looking at right now: the desperate, incompetent padding of Bristol at the RNC. What was Sarah trying to hide and who was she trying to convince at that moment?<br /><br />What has been established is that Bristol was padded excessively and that, other then earlier that day while meeting McCain on the tarmac, this is the only time her breast size was enhanced. (Earlier her breasts looked odd, as if they had been stuffed in a Lana Turner cone shaped push up bra, the blouse fabric stretched between two protruding points, but were still significantly smaller - without the pillowing - of the rounded bolster that went public that night.)<br /><br />The argument that the excess padding was to prevent possible leakage is a red herring. At no other time, except possibly the the one noted above, was excess padding in place. If heavy leakage was a concern, Bristol would not have been seen wearing the unpadded black dress or the light grey sweatshirt within days of the RNC. Audrey makes convincing arguments that Bristol was probably not breast feeding at this time at all, but for our purposes here it doesn't matter whether she was breast feeding or not because that is not what they were hiding.<br /><br />So what could be the possible story line?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Bristol, suddenly, in full bloom.</span><br /><br />Just before Bristol's appearance at the RNC, her pregnancy was announced and, at the time, Levi, the hidden boyfriend, was not identified by name as the father. The situation, like a dead fish forced to go with the flow, suddenly changed when he was quickly flown in to be the fiancé - legitimizing the pregnancy as much as possible. This was a narrative, similar to the wild ride story, that was being ad-libbed on the spot rather than being thought out. <br /><br />All of this seems to be a reaction to the immediate explosion of stories on the internet and the press about the Trig birth rumours after the announcement of Palin as McCain's running mate. As part of the containment, the internet was quickly and blatently scrubbed of photos and written material for the period in question according to accounts and dead links report by many different, unrelated people. Based on the variety and the extent of the sites scrubbed, this feat could only be accomplished with Sarah Palin's explicit involvement to direct, call in favours, etc. from individuals to remove the material. Her newly appointed press point person, Bill McAllister, would be a great help here. He was who Sarah confided to about the Bristol pregnancy rumours when he was still working at the local television station, a station that never covered the story. Bill, soon after, got a new job with the government, that I assume was more lucrative, working directly for Sarah. Apparently he passed the test of who Sarah felt she could work with. This new crisis would give him a chance to show his loyality once again to Sarah. When the <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2009/08/gusty-photo-when-was-it-taken.html">Gusty photos</a>, where Sarah is finally padded enough to actually look pregnant, were quietly released that week, the people involved were his former co-workers and he appeared in one of the pictures. It seems that a lot of favours were called in that week.<br /><br />There were two problem photos that made it through the scrubbing process. The family group picture in Juneau and the Christmas photo on the stairs, taken the same day, which slipped through to the Alaska Business Journal, Audrey discusses these in an excellent May 9th posting titled <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2009/05/ho-ho-ho.html">Ho! Ho! Ho!</a> The photo shot took place on September 13 or 14, 2007. In these pictures, Bristol's body has taken on an remarkable fullness compared to a picture taken three months earlier in June. A fullness that is extremely similar to how Bristol looks in the black dress in the photo shot with the McCains - less then two weeks shy of a year later. If anything, the breasts in 2007 appear fuller, which would be consistent with a first pregnancy when the breast tissue and skin are taunter than subsequent pregnancies. A situation that many woman reading this forum could verify.<br /><br />It appears that after scrubbing all the pictures of Bristol from public viewing in the couple of days leading up to the RNC, and thus seeing many pictures that we never did, Sarah and her accomplices would have been painfully aware that Bristol had the same body in 2008, when they were trying to show she was pregnant, to the body a year earlier, which, in a stretch with nothing to compare it to,could be passed off as a normal teenage growth spurt. Thus the desperate need to pad, especially Bristol's chest, to make her look different and more pregnant. We can assume from the RNC pictures that Bristol did not inherit her 44 year old mother's tight abs and at the young age of seventeen she had already "let herself go." Perhaps this is why she was hiding her changing body under a draped blanket during the VP announcement a few days earlier, before her pregnancy was made public. Or maybe this dead fish was being carried away through rapids.<br /><br />So who could possibly have done the padding and who was Sarah trying to fool?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Check the facts, ma'am.</span><br /><br />What do we know and/or can safely assume about the events leading up to Palin being picked as VP:<br /><br />* We know that John McCain had spent most of his life positioning himself to run for president and wanted that office with a fierce intensity.<br /><br />* Having won the process to be the Republican candidate, the most skilled and professional people within the party were helping him achieve this.<br /><br />* That Obama was, no pun intended, the dark horse candidate for the Democrats in, what became over time, a tight race with Hillary Clinton.<br /><br />* Obama winning the nomination suddenly changed the game plan for everyone and made it desirable for the Republicans to have a woman VP candidate and that they had to make a decision quickly.<br /><br />* That, to Lily B and Andrew Sullivan's dismay; the Republican party's detriment; and the country's disservice, there is a dirth of qualified candidates that can get past the extreme right wing base of the party.<br /><br />* It was a perfect storm for Sarah Palin.<br /><br />In answer to the question, "What do we know about Sarah Palin?" We can now say:<br /><br />* That ever since her first public appearance she wanted to stop being a fishwife and hobnob with the likes of Ivana Trump.<br /><br />* That she has thrown so many people under the bus that it gives a whole new meaning to Bette Davis' warning in all About Eve that people should "strap yourselves in: it is going to be a bumpy night."<br /><br />* There is scant evidence that she has shown loyalty or reciprocity to anyone. Todd, until the revelations in the last couple of weeks, appeared to be the only possible exception. Frequently she has turned on people immediately after getting what she wants. Her motto appears to be: leave no bridge unburned. She is not a team player and goes rogue.<br /><br />* Although she has furiously attacked people in the name of others, ex-brother-in law - separated husband of a friend, we can not assume that it is done out of loyalty as opposed to, for instance, sadistic enjoyment.<br /><br />* She is petty, vindictive, impulsive, and unethical.<br /><br />* She lies so freely, frequently, and flamboyantly that we can confidently refer to her as a pathological liar. Early in the campaign the McCain team had learned to double check anything that Sarah told them. I am referring here to team checking with Todd when she told them that they didn't have health insurance at the beginning of their marriage. Todd told them they always had coverage. The point is that within a week of the campaign the McCain team knew she wasn't trustworthy. What made them feel this way so quickly?<br /><br />* She is secretive and doesn't trust anyone - even her own family.<br /><br />* She is post-logical and beyond reason. While there is no denying that she is cunning, she is not intelligent - a dangerous combination that causes people to underestimate the damage psychopaths are capable of until it is too late. A strong argument can be made that she is also delusional.<br /><br />* In her mind, nothing is her fault and she is the victim. Except, of course, when she is an unmitigated success - "the world's greatest." The swings between the two extremes are rapid and almost instantaneous. To try to follow it will give you vertigo.<br /><br />* She does not understand the concept of merit and she can't see it from her house.<br /><br />* One of her few notable skills is to opportunistically turn situations to her advantage even if it harms others and it usually seems to do that. Political mentors destroyed; an inability for her to hold down a cushy job turned into a witch hunt against members of her own political party; a troubled son shipped to Iraq providing political capital; Trig's Downs Syndrome turned to political advantage while,it appears, that his developmental needs to reach his potential are being ignored; her children regularly pulled from school so they can act as props and human shields; humiliating her minor daughter in front of the entire world because, assuming that she is not lying, she is too much of a prima donna to produce a birth certificate - fake or real. I could go on with this list, but in the interest of your stomach I will stop for now. <br /><br />* The two most frequently used manipulative techniques we see Sarah do in public are using sexual flirtation and affinity cons. An affinity con is when you make a connection with people because you pretend to be just like them, sharing the same values, beliefs, and experiences. "I'm a hockey mom just like you!" "Someone called me a red neck and I said thank you!" Although we can guarantee that sexual flirtation was part of her interaction with McCain, in his defence when explaining his choice, he said that Sarah reminded him of his younger self.<br /><br />* She believes that, by being brazen, she can manoeuvre and lie her way out of any difficult situation.<br /><br />How does this all tie into the bolster bosom?<br /><br />Let's now look at what lead up to the RNC. Some of this is conjecture but it is based on how the individuals would act if we take previous behaviour into account.<br /><br />* Having to make a quick choice for VP and tactically wanting a woman on the ticket, Sarah Palin was called down to meet with McCain. There was no time to do a independent vetting of her.<br /><br />* McCain's team, however, would have sat down with Sarah and asked her detailed questions including if there were any skeletons in her closet which they would have to manage. <br /><br />* Without stopping to blink, Sarah, with amazing consistency of character, would do the only thing she knows how to do: she would lie through her teeth. She would not tell them she had a pregnant daughter; she would have dismissed out of hand the Trig rumours; she would have laughed off the ethical complaints. She wanted the nomination and she would, as she always had, lie and betray her way to it. If she had to fudge a few things and cover some things up, she felt confident that she could get away with it. After all, she had got away with it before. She smiled and winked and came across as charming.<br /><br />* She got the nomination. The family flew down and it was publicly announced.<br /><br />* Immediately the skeletons started to surface. The team tried to talk to her about the various issues, but she stonewalled them.<br /><br />* Meanwhile, she went into personal damage control without McCain's team: having the state site, along with others, scrubbed of photos. Getting the Gusty photos posted. The scrubbing was noticed and someone on the McCain team, perhaps the stylist, noticed Bristol's body.<br /><br />* Being caught on Bristol's pregnancy and still avoiding the McCain's team request for Trig's birth certificate to squash the rumours, Sarah decided to kill two birds with one stone and Bristol's pregnancy was announced. She was good at improvising - no need for a birth certificate now. Bristol's body now needed to be as pregnant as possible, hopefully people won't notice that she looked the same way the year before. When the McCain aid told the press that Bristol was around five months along, they were only repeating what Sarah had told them.<br /><br />* Levi was called to come down, probably at the team's insistence, to be Bristol's fiancé.<br /><br />* Sarah had a problem. She did not want to or couldn't produce Trig's birth certificate and the McCain team kept asking her for it. They were beginning to hint to her that she could gracefully step down citing family responsibilities. There was no way she was going to miss this opportunity. She loved the attention and she loved all the new clothes. There was people to do her hair and make up and an entire trailer dedicated to the wardrobe for the McCain and Palin families. She had spent time there looking at all the great clothes - she would get more of course. How could she get the McCain team off her back about the birth certificate. They didn't need it since Bristol was pregnant - did they? So why were they bothering her about it? Maybe Bristol should look more pregnant so no one would ask any more silly questions. Suddenly Sarah had an idea and she strolled over to the wardrobe trailer to help herself to one of Megan McCain's dresses.<br /><br />* Megan McCain, as anyone with eyes can see, is a well endowed woman. She also has an interest in fashion design. Her tailored dresses look custom made for her body and one of her styles, which shows up repeatedly on the campaign, is the dresses that have the same fabric and cut of the grey dress Bristol is stuffed into at the RNC. That dress is not one that can be bought off the rack or is it a maternity dress (It is too structured and would only work for a week or two at the most during a normal pregnancy, if it would fit at all.)<br /><br />* That evening, after Bristol had her hair and makeup done, Sarah got everyone out of trailer except the two of them. Bristol removed the dress the stylist choose and put on Megan's, then Sarah stuffed it to fill out the bosom. It took a lot of towels and perhaps the empathy belly as a foundation. Bristol carried Trig, well she always carried Trig, to hide the over stuffed bosom until she was at the RNC when it was too late for the McCain team to do anything about it.<br /><br />* Sarah had pulled it off and she felt on top of her game as she mounted the podium to speak. She was exuding confidence and smugness and the crowd loved her. When they came to her afterwards about the dress, she threw the success of that speech into their faces. They were committed to her now and couldn't back out. Sarah had won.<br /><br />* Now committed to a course of action that they didn't feel that they could retreat from without fatally wounding the campaign, as good political operatives, the McCain team would fall on their swords as Sarah threw them under the bus. They went into damage control - helping to cover up for Sarah.<br /><br />* Within the campaign Sarah circled her few wagons against the McCain team and the team had no choice but to circle theirs around hers to protect her from the public and to try to contain the damage she was inflicting. Bristol was stuck in the very middle, pulled from sight once again - on the bus looking after her "baby brother."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The smoking gun: out of the holster and into the bolster</span><br /><br />Why is the bolster bosom a smoking gun? If Sarah had given birth to Trig there was no need to do it. In the rational world that is obvious to see. In the distorted logic of Personality Disorders there was no gain in doing it and a lot of risk if she wasn't able to pull it off. PDs are never that concerned about risk, but they are very aware of gain. And Sarah gained a lot by stuffing Bristol and going rogue on the McCain team. She hijacked the crazy republican base and is now in control of them; she is reportedly getting 11 million dollars [now reduced to seven] for her book - when she isn't capable of writing a sentence; she is getting her followers to send her money to spend as she pleases; she has fame; and she no longer has to be a fishwife. And, if McCain had won despite the impact she was having on the campaign, he would have been stuck with her as his VP.<br /><br />She gained because she managed to pull it off, but the problem she was facing at that moment was trying to avoid giving Trig's birth certificate to the McCain team and then the rest of the world, which means that she didn't give birth to Trig. We knew that already, but the effort she took to pad Bristol's bosom confirms it. Why would she casually pad Bristol for no reason when she couldn't be bother to consistently wear belly pads for a month? With all the other important events happening to Sarah in that week - why did this become her pressing priority? The Trig rumours were not even on the radar for Sarah the week before and after the first week of the campaign she went back to her stance that we should just believe anything that she says regardless what reality looks like. In that one week, Sarah was under pressure to prove the Trig rumours untrue and she couldn't. By the end of the week, the McCain team would have realized that there was no birth certificate coming forward because Sarah had lied to them and they probably stopped asking for it. By the time they sent a couple of operatives, posing as secret service men, to Sherry Johnson's house to scrub their computers they knew what they were looking for and why they were deleting it. (Although my guess is that they kept copies of what they found.)<br /><br />Why do I think that she was conning the McCain team? It is very hard committing a con on a large group of people. Sarah has trouble focusing and does not plan ahead. She only reacts to what is happening to her in the immediate present, as her sudden resignation showed us. Conning McCain and his team was her immediate priority. The public appearances of Bristol were just part of her clout with them to show them they were stuck with her. Before the election was over, she felt that she didn't need the team anymore, she had established herself with the extreme right on her own terms. <br /><br />There is no way that McCain and company would have worked with Sarah, if they had any inkling of who she was. It was all risk, very little gain, and enormous loses, which we saw as the campaign continued. It took less then a week for her to turn on them and I think that they were stunned by what happened. They became accomplices in her actions against their will. They were tricked.<br /><br />By the way, it may be worthwhile, before it is scrubbed, to look for pictures of Megan McCain in that dress or ones that are similar. She would never wear that dress after that night but she may have worn it before then.<br /><br />Why did the MSM not follow up on this? Three reasons: the first is the success of her speech at the RNC overshadowed the story. The boost she provided to the campaign was only two weeks long before she became a liability that the public was reacting to. In the news cycle that made the Trig rumours old news. Second when the media asked Obama about Bristol's pregnancy he stopped them cold by taking a principled stand to leave families alone. This was so breathtakingly civilized that the progressive media backed off the story (this was before more revelations surfaced). The right wing media is in no mood to be civil and Sarah is their pitbull - so they won't cover it.vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-66480803538821342542010-01-04T18:07:00.000-08:002010-01-04T18:23:58.408-08:00Cornerstone comments on the odd stuffing of Bristol Palin at the RNC<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KfsWnzxiI/AAAAAAAAAC8/Ep7s2wJ7qgI/s1600-h/lopsided.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0KfsWnzxiI/AAAAAAAAAC8/Ep7s2wJ7qgI/s400/lopsided.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423072485643109922" /></a><br /><br />These are some comments I wrote on the site Palin Deceptions in response to the <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2009/08/cornerstone-part-1.html">three</a> <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2009/08/cornerstone-part-2.html">collective</a> <a href="http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2009/08/cornerstone-questions-and-answers.html">posts</a> called The Cornerstone.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">August 15 - 5:37 am</span><br /><br />I started this comment before Audrey posted again. It is funny how they reenforce each other. <br /><br />My two bits added. Bristol Palin may have been breast feeding and/or pregnant at the RNC. Or she may have been in neither of those states based on the pictures taken. Because what is clear and indisputable is that she was padded for the evening to such an alarming degree that Audrey's outrage of the treatment of Bristol should be a majority opinion. Whoever forced Bristol into that outfit was being maliciously cruel. It far exceeded the point, that we should believe that Bristol was five months pregnant, that Sarah Palin was trying to make.<br /><br />I defy anyone to show me a photo of a young, slender woman, five months pregnant, whose breasts are as large as that. To make it easier, I won't even stipulate that the woman's unpregnant breast size should be a B cup or less. In my own experience, I am normally well endowed (34F). When my milk first came in, my breasts were the largest that the midwives and various other birthing professionals had ever seen. (No sniggers please.) And even then I was not as large as Bristol in the RNC photos and would have required a fair amount of padding to get to that size.<br /><br />If we were to swallow the hook and believe that those were Bristol's breasts, instead of what they really resembled - a down pillow stuffed in the top of a dress, we would have to acknowledge that the dress was significantly compressing the 'breasts' by pushing them together and upwards - swelling the upper part of her chest. If they were real breasts, they would be even bigger once she took the dress off. Let's just forget about finding any clothes, other then a muumuu, which would close properly over such an expansive chest. Yet in every other photo we have of Bristol the clothes do exactly that. You can't even see a swell of any breast in the picture of Bristol in a sweat shirt ten days before and the vest she wears afterwards is loose across her chest - no curve even registers through the fabric. <br /><br />By the way, if anyone gets squeamish about discussing a seventeen year old girl's breasts, remind them that we are actually analysing a pillow.<br /><br />The strange body that Bristol was forced to wear at RNC was a one off event. Interestingly the photos of the weirdly pregnant Bristol became public the same week, or was it within days, that the Gutsy photos of a suddenly pregnant Sarah Palin became available on the internet - the only photo that shows a undeniably pregnant belly, but most probably not a real one. I would strongly suggest that the two events are linked together. (Remember that, due to the work of the other Morgan and others, we know that the Gutsy photo had been significantly altered. It was also Morgan's analysis of the photographs that hit a nerve with Sarah Palin: leading to her flagging Morgan for the harassment that resulted in the shutting down of Morgan's site.) <br /><br />Sarah Palin had a problem - the rumours around Trigg's birth - and her two prong rebuttal to that shows up within days of each other. A photograph showing her in a real pregnancy empathy belly, which she didn't seem to own back in the Spring of 2008. The empathy belly only appears in this altered pictured released months later, the rest of the time she used improvised padding - even in Texas. And the overly padded daughter displayed in public and national television for one night. It is the same idea executed badly both times. (It should be noted that care was taken to have Sarah look nice in the Gutsy photo while Bristol was made to look humiliatingly grotesque.) And, yes, she really does think that we are so stupid that we wouldn't notice, which is a common trait for people who score high on the Psychopathy Checklist - they think that they are extremely clever and we won't catch on to the obvious discrepancies. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">August 16 9:47 am</span><br /><br /><br />Audrey, I think that you are right in identifying Sarah Palin outing Bristol's pregnancy at RNC as the cornerstone of this whole story. Sit back and think about this for a moment. That Sarah Palin's wild ride story doesn't stand up to scrutiny is a given, but is that what motivated this blog and kept it and us at this story? If Palin had discretely kept her mouth shut and the news of Bristol's pregnancy with Tripp had leaked out from other sources, I think that our response would be much different. Even though we - a high proportion of us being mothers - knew the story was false, we would have respected their privacy and thought it an old fashion, perhaps misdirected, but recognized practice of covering for an unwed daughter's pregnancy. A story of a mother and daughter in a bind that would evoke sympathy from most of the commentators of this blog.<br /><br />What raised the red flags for me, and started me looking more seriously at Sarah Palin, was the callous act of outing Bristol's pregnancy at the RNC. A mother who would do that is not a mother who would cover her daughter's (or anyone's) pregnancy out of love and concern for her. It was the first publicized event regarding Sarah Palin, for those outside of Alaska, that had people respond in a visceral sense that something was seriously not right with McCain's new running mate.<br /><br />People who study morality, as opposed to those who theorize about it, have uncovered that there is a universal sense of morality that people normally do not violate without feeling shame, guilt and remorse. Those feelings are called social emotions because they help people stay within the universal morality. Researchers have also determined that there is a group of people that do no not naturally follow this code and who do not suffer adverse feelings to self correct their behaviour. Ruthlessly throwing your minor daughter under the bus in order to 'progress' your ambitions is an example of this other behaviour. That group, as you have undoubtedly guessed, is heavily dominated by people who score high on the Psychopathy Checklist.<br /><br />Audrey, that ache in your head comes from trying to fit Sarah's behaviour into an explanation that takes into account the universal sense of morality. Her behaviour makes makes complete sense when you compare it against checklist behaviour.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">August 16 9:49 am</span><br /><br />The shoddy treatment of Bristol continued. <br /><br />So what else do we know about Sarah and her relationship with her children? We know from the pictures taken around the RNC that Bristol was acting as one of Trig's primary caregivers. From what we observed, it appeared that she was the primary caregiver. The bonding between the two was undeniable. What appeared to be Sarah's response to the photos? To banish Bristol from the campaign and have a seven year old child look after a special needs baby under difficult circumstances. Bristol only reappears, based on the available photos, from October 14 to her birthday on October 18 before she once again drops out of sight on the campaign trail. Does this make sense from a humane parenting point of view? Set aside the question of whether Bristol is Trig's birth mom. Trig's primary caregiver was taken away from him when he was being jostled across the country and displayed as a prop at loud rallies that ran late. Anyone who observed the campaign would see that Trig's 'mother', Sarah, did not have time to look after his needs. No wonder it appears as if they drugged him into a stupor during those two months, he would be having separation anxiety from being taken from Bristol. If Bristol was with the campaign, but kept in hiding from the photographers -including Megan McCain - and all public events, we once again have to ask why and what purpose did it serve.<br /><br />Bristol's banishment from the entire immediate family came directly after Sarah announced that they would stand behind Bristol as a family. What was Bristol doing during this period - well, just like the Willow and Piper, she wasn't going to school . So why banish her? If she was going to become a mother for the first time, the experience of looking after Trig would be a good one for her to have. Although, from what I can gather about Sarah's reluctance to have people outside of the family look after her children, Bristol would have already clocked a substantial amount of time bringing up Piper while mommy was busy being mayor. (She was almost eleven when Piper was born - four years older than when Sarah deemed Piper old enough to look after Trig. ) Sarah obviously felt that Bristol was an experienced caregiver of children when she offered Bristol's baby-sitting services to Tina Fey on Bristol's eighteenth birthday.<br /><br />Banishment, by the way, seems to be a technique that Sarah uses quite frequently on her children once they become problematic to her. Track was banished to the lower 48 for a school year where, according to Sarah, she never visited him even though she gets on planes at the drop of a hat or the leaking of amniotic fluid. After that he was enlisted and banished to Iraq - thus turning a child who was a liability for Sarah's 'progressing' to an exploitable asset whether he is dead or alive. (As distastefully as it is to contemplate, the death or disablement of Track would be political gold for Sarah.) Bristol was carted off away from her family for part of her missing period in 2007/08. (As an aside, Todd appears to spend most of his time away from the family either up North for his two jobs or training for his snow machine races. It appears with the new revelations that he was also just a prop to be brought out on public appearances.)<br /><br />It all doesn't make sense: within a week we saw the sudden surfacing of the Gutsy photo; the announcement of Bristol's pregnancy with the exaggerated stuffing of her dress; and Bristol's disappearance once the pictures of her bonding with Trig were published. It only falls together as a desperate response to squishing the rumours that Sarah did not give birth to Trig - wouldn't showing a birth certificate have been easier?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">August 17 8:06 am</span><br /><br />B, <br /><br />I am glad to find that you like a woman with a sense of humour. I wonder, however, at the other women you hang out with. I think it is fairly important to establish that the bolster chest has been deliberately padded out of proportion. I thought about your belief that Bristol was in a too small bra that cause the fullness in her upper chest. By the way, that fullness is called 'pillowing' by those in the trade. It is impossible that Bristol could fill that dress with only her own breasts no matter how she was strapped in to it. So I went for a stroll through the internet to find similar bolster chests for comparison. Most of the sites where I felt I could find them are not suitable for this forum, so instead I looked at pictures of Dolly Parton. Here is a picture that is similar to what Bristol was padded to at the RNC:<br /><br /><a href="http://ca.askmen.com/women/galleries/singer/dolly-parton/picture-2.html<br />">http://ca.askmen.com/women/galleries/singer/dolly-parton/picture-2.html<br /></a><br />(I would give you other ones but the addresses are too long.) Now Dolly is going to look proportionally bigger than Bristol because they were trying to emphase that Bristol's belly had a baby in it and Dolly's looks like she has the ribcage of a squirrel. But the shape and size of the chest is the same. So if that is the breast size that it takes to get the bolster look unpadded (and I discovered that Dolly is most definitely assisted from the inside) then Bristol was padded.<br /><br />For those of you who think it was done to hide any possibility of potential breast milk leakage, can you tell me why they put Bristol in a grey dress: the colour and fabric that is guaranteed to turn black if such an event were to occur. Whoever dressed Bristol was either worried about leakage or they were not and, if they were worried, that fear dissipated the next day as well as not being there ten days before. The grey dress was not put on Bristol because it was the only option available. Except for Bristol, the Palin clan was dressed by a professional with a good eye for making people attractive, who was responsible for wardrobe. The black dress that Bristol wore to the photo shot was picked by a professional and it would have been available, along with other flattering options, for the RNC. The grey dress was the anomaly. And, by the way, the dress was altered. No dress bought off the rack will fit a rack like that - there are just not enough Dolly Partons walking around to make it economically viable to sell to that market. Without the chest to fill it, the dress and fabric would hang horribly on anyone else.<br /><br />Why is this important? It shows us that Sarah Palin felt a desperate need to deceive people to get the story she wanted across. I have been thinking about who she was really trying to deceive at that particular moment. More in a bit.<br /><br />vera<br /><br />p.s. Joe I haven't forgotten you. Those are nuanced questions to answer.vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-78471656800239022122009-12-22T07:03:00.000-08:002010-01-17T10:18:40.610-08:00Comparison Photos of Piper Palin, Curtis Menard Jr.'s Children, Curtis Menard Jr and Track Palin<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzT-QmfpAxI/AAAAAAAAAC0/bKan5rQw82k/s1600-h/10087126_BG2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzT-QmfpAxI/AAAAAAAAAC0/bKan5rQw82k/s400/10087126_BG2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419235812798169874" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzDgZ_f50uI/AAAAAAAAACA/Ut5f0CfpHfs/s1600-h/Track+Palin+-+Curtis+Menard+Jr.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 232px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzDgZ_f50uI/AAAAAAAAACA/Ut5f0CfpHfs/s400/Track+Palin+-+Curtis+Menard+Jr.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418077088873304802" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzDgZku9nLI/AAAAAAAAAB4/PLMazIcR-IU/s1600-h/menards.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzDgZku9nLI/AAAAAAAAAB4/PLMazIcR-IU/s400/menards.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418077081688710322" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzDgZtUcWiI/AAAAAAAAABw/Ri1tv3yKggg/s1600-h/piper-palin-3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 197px; height: 233px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzDgZtUcWiI/AAAAAAAAABw/Ri1tv3yKggg/s400/piper-palin-3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418077083993397794" /></a><br /><br />I added a picture of Curtis Menard's parents, Linda and Curtis Sr., at the top.<div><br /></div><div>I put this photo comparison post up during the discussion that happened around the Abortiongate revelations at Palingates based on some links from one of the commenters. Over the last year and a half, frequently commenters on blogs have mentioned that Piper Palin looks more like her brother Track then her sisters. </div><div><br /></div><div>The <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2009/12/sarah-palins-abortiongate.html">abortingate post</a> was originally focused on the passage in Going Rogue where Palin talks about her second pregnancy which ended in a D&C (see the post for details - it, of course, is complicated). One of many things people thought was odd was the mention of Curtis Menard Jr. at the beginning of the passage. This resulted in few people, including myself, doing searches and the surfacing of photographs that were compared to Track Palin, such as the my earlier post. People then began to wonder about the earlier noted resemblance of Piper and Track Palin. </div><div><br /></div><div>Looking at the pictures, Piper is at the age where it is hard for me to clearly see who she resembles. I do, however, think that the Menard children, who unlike the Palin siblings look very much alike, bare a strong resemblance to their mother. If someone can find a photo which is more definitive, I will post it. When I looked, I didn't see one.</div><div><br /></div><div>A few points that people kept asking about at Palingates. Curtis Menard Jr. died in a plane crash, while flying alone, six months after Piper was born. According to his wife <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2009/12/sarah-palins-abortiongate.html">Carole</a>, he met with Sarah Palin just before his death to talk to her about her children. Curtis Menard Jr. was Track's godfather. </div><div><br /></div><div>According to what I have read, Curtis Menard Jr. was a devoted father and husband. They seem to me to be a loving family.</div><div><br /></div><div>Remember as well that Curtis Menard Jr. met his wife Carole in 1990 and married her in 1992. According to a court document that someone found, Track was born April 20, 1989 - prior to that only the year could be determined. According to the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2008-11/43179602.pdf">letter written by Cathy Baldwin-Johnson</a> - Palin's doctor, which was quietly released on the eve of the presidential election in 2008, Track was a term delivery. If it had been pre-term, that fact would probably be made public because Sarah and Todd eloped less then eight months before. (End of August - exact date alludes me right now.) So none of the people we are talking about were married at the time of Track's conception.</div><div><br /></div><div>What we know is that Piper looks like Track and we are quite certain that Sarah Palin gave birth to both of them. (If it was anyone else, that would be stated definitively. She did look typically and convincingly pregnant with both of them.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Another point: in a follow up <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2009/12/sarah-palin-goes-fishing.html">post</a>, Patrick put up some other odd passages from Going Rogue where Palin is talking about her second pregnancy which did not come to term. All anyone knows about this, so far, comes from Palin's book. She says the babies were going to be a year apart and were right on schedule, which would mean the conception of the second pregnancy fell again during the fishing season. During that period, Todd is working at BP - this is either the North Slope or a fishing boat. Sarah Palin, along with baby Track, her parents and one other person go to fish Todd's leased site on Bristol Bay. They leave ten weeks after Track's birth which would be the very end of June. So during the period that the second baby was conceived, according to Palin, Sarah Palin was in Bristol Bay and Todd was either at the North Slope or on a boat but, and this is important, getting some time to join Sarah in Bristol Bay and help with the season's catch. Unless you piece that together you can be left with the impression, by not reading her book closely, that at a crucial period she was in Wasilla with Todd away a lot. This does not appear to be the case.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-86832923649512339262009-12-19T19:11:00.000-08:002010-02-09T10:01:25.300-08:00Comparison Photos of Linda and Curtis Menard Sr. and Track Palin UPDATE: Sarah and Todd Palin Elopement Photo UPDATE 2: Lineup UPDATE 3: grandparents<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzT831oq-kI/AAAAAAAAACs/3Tj9i_caqIk/s1600-h/378995004.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 262px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SzT831oq-kI/AAAAAAAAACs/3Tj9i_caqIk/s400/378995004.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419234287854221890" /></a> Linda Menard, mother of Curtis Menard Jr.<div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/Sy2WJ0lwWpI/AAAAAAAAABo/mTVAfUuFBn4/s1600-h/slide_267_6.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/Sy2WJ0lwWpI/AAAAAAAAABo/mTVAfUuFBn4/s400/slide_267_6.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417151022276565650" /></a> Track Palin</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/Sy2WJn9fXYI/AAAAAAAAABg/T5bx-_vG2m4/s1600-h/curtis+menard.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 210px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/Sy2WJn9fXYI/AAAAAAAAABg/T5bx-_vG2m4/s400/curtis+menard.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417151018886454658" /></a> Curtis Menard Sr., father of Curtis Menard Jr.</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0wDfGEVO6I/AAAAAAAAAFU/QcVCCSvZ3-w/s1600-h/Palin+college+and+todd_2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 371px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0wDfGEVO6I/AAAAAAAAAFU/QcVCCSvZ3-w/s400/Palin+college+and+todd_2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425715483814214562" /></a> Elopement photograph of Sarah Heath and Todd Palin - Sarah is already pregnant with Track</div><div><br />After reading the post <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2009/12/sarah-palins-abortiongate.html">Abortiongate</a> at the site Palingates, I did a search for pictures of Curtis Menard and found this picture of his father. The Linda Menard photo was found later and Barb Dwyer found and posted this picture that Sarah and Todd sent out to announce their elopement. I leave it to you to see who Track resembles. (More comparison photos <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2009/12/open-thread-sarah-palins-will-sign.html">here</a> and <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2009/12/comparison-photos-of-piper-palin-curtis.html">here</a>.)</div><div><br />If you are interested in Sarah Palin, read my August post on the <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2009/08/gusty-photo-when-was-it-taken.html">Gusty photos</a> and the posts in January.</div><div><br /></div><div>UPDATE 2:</div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0z4O63I_ZI/AAAAAAAAAFc/J9V3LtB9yHA/s1600-h/82653433.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 274px; text-align: center; " src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S0z4O63I_ZI/AAAAAAAAAFc/J9V3LtB9yHA/s400/82653433.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425984586276994450" /></a>While researching a reader's comment in <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/2010/01/mysterious-case-of-bolster-bosom.html">The Mysterious Case of the Bolster Bosum</a> I came across this picture that made me sit back for a moment. Here is John McCain and the Palin family, when Levi Johnston was considered family, lined up on stage after Palin's speech at the RNC. Look at the difference between Track and Todd's bodies. Track is huge in both height and breadth compared to Todd. [I stand corrected: Track is the same height as Todd, his chest is still broader and the two of their bodies do not look alike. Thank you readers.] Remember Track is only nineteen here and most boys' chests do not broaden out to their full extent until they are some years into their twenties. (I am around a lot of teenage and early twenties boys and witness the chronology of their blooming.) Track may not be his full mature size here. <div><br /></div><div>Does anyone know how big the Menard men are? (Height and breadth only please. We do not need the other details, Sarah.) Sarah's father, Chuck Heath, is not a very tall man and I do not know about Chuck Jr. If I remember correctly, the picture I saw of Todd's father didn't have him towering over his third wife Faye. (Like Curtis Sr. is doing <a href="http://thoughtsfromveracity.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=8">here</a> beside Linda and I will bet money that she is wearing heels with that string of pearls.) </div><div><br /></div><div>There may be some tall genes somewhere in those two families, because Bristol is also looking fairly tall here compared to her mother, sister Willow, and even her father. So far I have been assuming that Bristol is Todd's biological child, she appears to resemble him more then any of the other children, but I must remember that we are talking about Sarah Palin. A woman who God, in either his wisdom or as part of an infinite jest, has chosen to bestow miraculous pregnancies upon. Whether it is being blessed with tight abs and divine intervention to get her back to Alaska from Texas to give birth, twenty hours and counting after she started to leak amniotic fluids, or the conceptions of her first two pregnancies, the second one <a href="http://palingates.blogspot.com/2009/12/sarah-palins-abortiongate.html">terminated early in a clerical error</a>, which occurred while Todd was working as a deck hand on a fishing boat at sea.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, Sarah, what a tangled web you weave,</div><div>when first you practise to conceive!</div><div><br /></div><div>UPDATE 3:</div><div><br /></div><div>People have asked for photographs of the other grandparents.</div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3GMgadNXKI/AAAAAAAAAGE/M9Wl6WyA_1Y/s1600-h/24palin0.650.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3GMgadNXKI/AAAAAAAAAGE/M9Wl6WyA_1Y/s400/24palin0.650.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436280713698434210" /></a>The Palins and Todd's biological parents. Todd strongly resembles his father.</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3GOc7CueWI/AAAAAAAAAGM/Lg_ztPsX2I0/s1600-h/family.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3GOc7CueWI/AAAAAAAAAGM/Lg_ztPsX2I0/s400/family.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436282852749506914" /></a>Chuck and Sally Heath with their son Chuck Heath Jr. in between. Chuck Heath Jr. is not standing on a platform, his father is a very short man judging from all the pictures. As he has grown older, Chuck Jr. resembles his mother more. When he was a child, he and his older sister, Heather, looked very much like their father.</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3GSc-0mUII/AAAAAAAAAGU/fiadkxFiz5Y/s1600-h/Picture-10-e1265064794352.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 264px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3GSc-0mUII/AAAAAAAAAGU/fiadkxFiz5Y/s400/Picture-10-e1265064794352.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436287251810504834" /></a>At the request of a commenter below, I am including a picture of Chuck Heath Jr. which she feels, after looking at many photographs, bares a strong resemblance to Track. There should be since Chuck Jr. is the biological brother of Sarah Palin and no one is disputing that she gave birth to Track. </div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3GW4yc_E7I/AAAAAAAAAGc/dk5xThPOPXc/s1600-h/Giuliani%2BStumps%2BMcCain%2BNevada%2BfSiHbjx5MhLl.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 137px; height: 154px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3GW4yc_E7I/AAAAAAAAAGc/dk5xThPOPXc/s400/Giuliani%2BStumps%2BMcCain%2BNevada%2BfSiHbjx5MhLl.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436292127573087154" /></a><br /></div><div>In the course of fairness, and also wondering what the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorian_Gray_syndrome">Dorian Gray</a> portrait looks like which Sarah Palin is desperately trying to hide in her attic by having numerous cosmetic surgery procedures, I have also looked through photographs of the Heaths including some <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/unauthorized-magazine-reveals-sarah-palin-child-huntress-of-alaska/2/">earlier ones</a>. I was struck by two things. One, the portrait in Sarah's attic, I believe, most resembles her mother, Sally. Two, as our fellow blogger, <a href="http://ozmud.wordpress.com/2009/12/29/the-four-ounce-gambol-mcphoney-mcphotos/">Oz Mudflats</a>, sang in one of her earlier posts when looking at another set of pictures, "One of these things doesn't go with the others." (Hint: it isn't the bear.)</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3Ggu70iK7I/AAAAAAAAAGk/mZ02fKZowQc/s1600-h/Picture-5-e1265064277952.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 248px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/S3Ggu70iK7I/AAAAAAAAAGk/mZ02fKZowQc/s400/Picture-5-e1265064277952.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436302953405361074" /></a><br /><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-67357344396505835172009-11-20T18:19:00.001-08:002009-11-20T18:20:12.081-08:00Being Distracted By Living<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SwdOR8a-PwI/AAAAAAAAABY/3EtnflRBmvc/s1600/hs-2009-25-f-web.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 343px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SwdOR8a-PwI/AAAAAAAAABY/3EtnflRBmvc/s400/hs-2009-25-f-web.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406375947865571074" /></a><br />That was a break. There I was working on an entry about evil and all hell let loose. The return of the parodical son; floods; the multiple digging of moats; crews descending down to sort through my past and box the salvageable; an early morning trip to emergency where I had days to compare and contrast first hand the medical systems of two countries....<br /><br />And the release and the beginning of Sarah Palin's book tour - which begs to be discussed within the context of how she sits on the psychopathy checklist. <br /><br />Although her actions may seem illogical to others, they make complete sense if you have an understanding of how people on the checklist act. In that context, nothing that Sarah Palin does is surprising.vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-52746318696822032392009-09-11T18:48:00.000-07:002009-09-11T21:25:37.166-07:00Show Me The Numbers<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SqsiPgrEB2I/AAAAAAAAABA/T0ekSnNWmy4/s1600-h/hs-2009-25-q-large_web.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 204px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SqsiPgrEB2I/AAAAAAAAABA/T0ekSnNWmy4/s400/hs-2009-25-q-large_web.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380431829688125282" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;"><div>When I tell people I research people on the psychopath checklist, they are frequently taken aback. Why spend my time looking at such a small and insignificant part of the population they wonder. This misunderstanding comes from commonly held myths about psychopaths. People assume that all psychopaths are drooling axe murders as represented in slasher films. If we hold this view, it would appear that for there are more films about axe murdering psychopaths then exist in real life. A small group indeed.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>However, axe murders are only tiny fraction of the psychopaths who live among us. It should also be remembered that just because someone is an axe murder, it doesn't follow that they are a psychopath. It is far more likely that they suffer from severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, where they are not in control of their actions and feel compelled to perform horrible acts. Given the right circumstances non-psychopaths will also commit grisly crimes, although in that case the circumstances usually involve a psychopath somewhere behind the scene.</div><div><br /></div><div>So what is the scope? Estimates of the number of true psychopaths in the population have been given between one to four percent of the population. Hare started out with an estimate of three percent and later reduced it to one percent. Why the drop? Probably it was done as the extent of the subthreshold group, that display enough traits on the checklist to be a problem, became more recognized. The estimate for that group is ten percent of the population, which is in addition to the true psychopaths. These people do a lot of harm even if they do not cross the threshold. Still they are responsible for a staggering amount of child abuse, corporate practises that hurt others, living off of others, psychological abuse, addiction, fraud, and irresponsible behaviour. </div><div><br /></div><div>Keep in mind, as well, that the placement of the threshold is subjective; a point placed along a continuous line of behaviour. Since Hare developed the checklist and the threshold to have a consistent group for various researchers to study, it would make sense that they would be looking at keeping the group they study relatively pure by having more stringent guidelines of who qualifies. Remember, also, that Hare and Cleckley were working with convicted prisoners and the designation is weighted towards their behaviour. And, lastly, the designation of psychopath is not one that can be achieved at birth. Half of the checklist is made up of lifestyle choices and actions taken. To some degree you have to work to become a psychopath. Which means that all of the one percent who are true psychopaths started out in the ten percent group that is below the threshold.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the the US, that one percent represents just over three million individuals, while the additional ten percent is thirty million people in the country. To put this in perspective that is the entire population of Canada. </div><div><br /></div><div>Try this as an exercise. Start your day tomorrow by counting the people you come across. Within every ten you count is someone on the checklist. For every hundred you come across there is a psychopath. Since this group have no problem about hurting people they don't know and cause damage to people at a distance, you should include everyone in the cars going past you, where it can be acted out in road rage, drunken driving, unsafe driving, or abductions. Count as well those sitting on the bus or walking the street and everyone at your work or school - not just your department or class.</div><div><br /></div><div>The number is quite large isn't it? Now over the course of the day most of the people on the checklist will not be doing anything to hurt you; they are just going about their day as you are. The problems arise when they want something and how they set out to get it. It could be money, revenge, sexual satisfaction, or, perhaps, your job or partner. They are all around us and yet most of us do not know hardly anything about how these people react and how to notice the danger signs.</div><div><br /></div><div>Happy counting.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">Post Script: I think pictures look nice on the blog, but I will not put up endless pictures of well known murders. So we will have to settle for other unrelated pictures. I will start with images of space taken from the Hubble to put things in perspective.</span><br /></div><div><br /></div></span>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-11057046615767312042009-09-05T19:12:00.000-07:002009-09-11T19:06:30.279-07:00The Origins of What We Know About Psychopathy<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:48px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times;font-size:16px;"><div style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; width: auto; font: normal normal normal 100%/normal Georgia, serif; text-align: left; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The personality disorder that I research is psychopathy and the group of individuals that fall just below the threshold to be designated a psychopath. In the beginning, identifying them was a harder task then it should have been and that difficulty is part of this story. There is a lot of confusion about what psychopaths are, how they became that way, and even what to call them. (Even more with the latter group that are below the threshold.) This confusion does not exist because there is no research that empirically gives us a reliable profile of the disorder. The research exists and the diagnostic tool - the Psychopathy Checklist, which is one of the most reliable diagnostic tools - has been available since 1980 (its one revision was in 1985). The checklist was developed, in part, because there was no consistent definition of what a psychopath was. Each individual researcher, prior to this, could have be using a different set of criteria. This made it impossible to develop a standardized body of results. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The checklist was developed by Robert Hare a Canadian who, after getting his masters in psychology in the early sixties, took a job in the B.C. penitentiary. What he experienced there - with one inmate, Ray, in particular - lead him to his life's work. We should be grateful that his life has turned out to be long lived instead of possibly ending soon after he left the penitentiary and Ray, who had access to his car being repaired in the prison workshop. Soon after, Hare's breaks gave out going down a long hill. The mechanic who looked at the car afterwards found that not only was the break-line cut, but that ball bearings had been put into the carburetor fluid system and the hoses to the radiator had been tampered with. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It is this personal brush with a psychopath that usually leads to a person deciding to find out more about them.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Robert Hare was building on the work done by Hervey Cleckley, who is considered the pioneer of the field of psychopathy. In 1941, Cleckley published The Mask of Sanity originally a study of male hospitalized psychopaths. (Imprisoned psychopaths frequently manipulate authorities to move them to psychiatric wards where they believe that they will receive better treatment and more perks. They wreck havoc there and can often be bounced back forth between the two institutions.) He kept revising his work until shortly before his death in 1984, expanding the group he was studying in later revisions. Over the years both Hare and Cleckley influenced each other. However, Cleckley's work was based on observation, sometimes using psychoanalytical concepts popular at the time to explain what he saw, whereas Hare and others who came afterwards have a more empirical foundation to what they study.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Psychopaths have existed throughout the ages and they are found in every culture around the world. They have always been present in a reading of history and folklore. The systematic exploration of their traits and why they act the way they do, however, has a relatively brief history. Starting in 1941 with the Mask of Sanity, it took almost forty years to develop a consistent working definition. From these beginnings a body of research has developed. The portrait of the psychopath is far from being filled in, but there is enough material for us to be able to confidently identify them and to look at the societal implications that stem from our shared existence with them. </span></div><div><br /></div></span></div></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;"></span></div></span></span></div>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-62098633149718021652009-09-01T20:12:00.000-07:002009-09-01T20:29:13.040-07:00An Inadvertent Beginning<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/Sp3kfed1hII/AAAAAAAAAA4/RJ_1G-AndiA/s1600-h/3374922487_7e67f33189_m.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/Sp3kfed1hII/AAAAAAAAAA4/RJ_1G-AndiA/s320/3374922487_7e67f33189_m.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376704759555523714" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;"><div>After I set this blog up and posted the Gusty photo entry, I was left to wonder where to go next. I am an eclectic thinker and have by accident and design established a life that allows me the time to think, read, and research that which catches my fancy. And I tend to fancy a fair amount of the world around me. Usually it is the anomalies that catch my attention and gets me to ask why and wonder what is going on behind the surface. Once on the trail of an idea I try to treat it with respect; allowing it to unfold on its own rhythm; not preordaining the outcome of where we are going; and staying open to the teasing offshoots of enquiry whose pursuit can be immensely rewarding. While following an idea, I cross several disciplines which both enriches what I am pursuing and adds depth to my understanding of each area I traipse through. There are many directions that this blog could go if left to document the numerous rocks I turn over in the course of my day to day life.</div><div><br /></div><div>Over the last decade, however, I have been drawn to try to understand one part of this world in more detail. I became fascinated in knowing what happens when people are sideswiped by individuals with personality disorders.</div><div><br /></div><div>I realize that this was not exactly the most mainstream interest. Or at least I thought that in the beginning when I started to delve into the subject. In time, I noticed that it is actually an undercurrent to many areas of our lives. Even though they are not identified, they show up in most movies and quite a few books - the more mainstream the entertainment the more they or their values are there. You can't get through the news without see several stories where they figure in. They fill our court system. You can't understand the current economic meltdown without taking them into account. Nor can you avoid them when looking at Ponzi schemes. They are a large part of corporate greed and political corruption. They are on reality shows and they are people we talk about. Because, by definition, they exploit others they gravitate to professions where they can do that: politics, finance, personal development, religion, celebrity, cult leader, crime - among others. They are the people in our lives who we would like to forget about, but can't. They are the people in our lives that draw us in and leave us mesmerized and queasy at the same time. They are the people who hurt us and cause massive financial and emotional hardship.</div><div><br /></div><div>For a minority of the population, individuals with personality disorders have a huge impact on how we live.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet we know almost nothing about them. To calmly examine their behaviour is a cultural taboo. The misconceptions about them are rampant. Yet a growing body of work has developed over the last forty years which allows us to understand them with greater and greater clarity. It is a body of work that is largely ignored, under reported, and unacknowledged. The work is fascinating and the implications that derive from it will change your perceptions of what it is to be human.</div><div><br /></div><div>That is predominately what we will cover in this blog. Which occasional means that we get to explore a few mysteries like the one about the Gusty photos. Sometimes to understand what happens, you have to stop thinking how you would behave in a situation and, instead, take on the perspective of someone with a personality disorder (as well as how the people around them would be reacting).</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a lot of ground to cover. I hope that you learn more about yourself and the world as we explore it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Vera</div></span>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-2594212015855636522009-08-26T17:27:00.000-07:002009-08-27T19:06:08.874-07:00The Gusty Photo - When Was It Taken?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SpXTpRNNnfI/AAAAAAAAAAM/CHywtgEloRE/s1600-h/sarahgusty.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Ye4Jx7gAh0/SpXTpRNNnfI/AAAAAAAAAAM/CHywtgEloRE/s400/sarahgusty.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374434436283473394" /></a>[This is a series of comments I wrote for Palin's Deceptions. There was a problem and not all of them were posted. Since each post built on the other, I put them here as one long post.]<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;"><div>I agree with the people who have commented that Trig's birth date should be identified as alleged. I also think that to keep with one of the objectives of the Palin's Deceptions site, which is to verify the accuracy of the evidence put forward, that the April 13 date for the Gusty photos would also have to be noted as alleged. There are just too many questions around the photos to confidently be able to say that the pregnant Sarah was photographed on that date. Their release on August 31, 2008 makes no sense. Audrey has mentioned that people would have posted pictures of Palin after her nomination was announced, but the circumstances don't fit that explanation. These pictures, at least the main part of the photos, were taken by people who were sympathetic to Palin - one even was hired by her to a position that required that Sarah could trusted him. </div><div><br /></div><div>Earlier release of the pictures would have been enormously helpful to Palin to dispel the rumours. If they were released on the alleged date they would have been timely and provide a human interest angle of the pregnant governor finishing up the legislative session - definitely news worthy for the news station in question. The footage and or pictures should have surfaced later in the week when Trig's birth was announced and there was no photo op with Palin and Trig - the very pregnant Palin would have been the closest image they would have. It would also have linked well to the five week early birth - showing that this baby was ready to come out. (By the way, I thought that Trig's announced expected birth date was in June, not May 23rd. Can someone clarify this?) The pictures would have been helpful after Trig's arrival was announced, when the rumours swelled up again. By July, Bill McAllister was then Palin's press secretary, a reporter was asking questions about Trig's birth - releasing the pictures would have been a good idea and easily arranged by McAllister, who we know for sure was present three minutes and fourteen seconds after the picture of the pregnant Palin was taken. Instead they didn't get a public viewing until Palin was linked to the McCain campaign. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>Recently, I have gone back and looked at the Gusty photos and thought about how they fit into this story. There are problems with the what Palin is wearing, other than the sudden appearance, for the first and only time, of convincing padding indicating that money was spent obtaining a real pregnancy belly. An investment which was not used later in the week when she flew to Texas. (Should we assume that Palin was worried about her luggage being searched or that she was too vain to appear that 'fat' when she was out of state trying to look pretty. The other possibility is that the pregnancy belly hadn't been purchased at that time because Palin thought she could get away with it. There is an enormous amount of contempt for the public shown in the slapdash way she padded herself - when she bothered to do it at all.) What are other problems with how Palin dressed that day which doesn't fit in to the rest of the timeline.</div><div><br /></div><div>1) The shoes. Take a look at them and ask yourself if you ever saw them before or any pair like them. They are the shoes a pregnant woman would wear, if she was not Sarah Palin. Throughout Palin's 'pregnancy' with Trig she wore heels when she wore dressy clothes. High ones - which would throw off her sense of balance, if she was actually pregnant. If you wanted to believably make Palin look pregnant, the heels would have to go.</div><div><br /></div><div>2) The lack of Palin's trademark wrinkles. In her clothes, not her face. People may refer to her as a clothes horse, but she has only a passing relationship with an iron; the difficulty of getting clothes back and forth to the drycleaner turns out to be part of the break down of her marriage; and, after the election, we discovered that she stuffs clothes she isn't wearing into garbage bags. All of this is easy to see if you review the pictures of Palin while she was 'pregnant ' and after, before she gets a wardrobe person to look after her clothes and she isn't as slovenly in her presentation. The clothes in the Gusty pictures are too crisp and well maintained in comparison to these other pictures and these shots are alleged to be taken late in the day, once everyone has gone home, on the last day of the legislative session. Instead the jacket looks freshly drycleaned and pressed and put on for the pictures. Why is this the only time in her pregnancy that it look like someone helped her get dressed?</div><div><br /></div><div>3) Her hair is too well behaved. Where is the bumpet or the back-teasing? Sarah likes extra volume and it is missing here. And, look again, in what other photo is her hair this neat? Here it looks conditioned and hangs as a nice mass instead of fly away and tangled as in the other pictures. Are you telling me that for once her hair behaved - at the end of the day for a quick interview that was so inconsequential it was never aired and for a few casual photos for someone else. I noticed, as well, that it seems that in that period Palin left her hair down when she was too busy to put it up (or to pad herself) and dressed more casually on those days. Oh yes, I have been wondering how her fringe bangs - the ones that soften her forehead - suddenly appear half an inch longer than the week before when they were freshly cut and hanging in a straight line well above her eyebrow.</div><div><br /></div><div>4) A sudden change in style. The jacket is the same, but the purple top doesn't appear anywhere else and conveniently and clearly shows the round of the belly. Throughout this period Palin wore black tops with the jacket. The scarf is suddenly gone as well. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>Now I am not sure when the pictures were taken of Andrea Gusty, and the camera databank isn't clear about that either. However, the high probability is that the images of Palin, at least her body and hair, that appears in them were not taken on April 13, but some time afterwards when she had someone who could help her get dressed and do her hair. Palin's behaviour is very consistent and she is not good at details; spending her own money on things she doesn't want - such as an empathy belly and sensible shoes; putting effort in doing a convincing con; or following the advise of others. Someone was helping her here and for once she was listening.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you include the excellent photo analysis that the other Morgan performed on these pictures, it becomes clearer how these pictures probably came into being before they became public.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>What do I think this, and the other inconsistencies surrounding these pictures, could possibly point to?</div><div><br /></div><div>It is my belief that Sarah Palin conned the McCain team when they were doing their vetting process. They would not knowingly risk everything, if they knew what Palin was really like, and they would be doing some due diligence to figure out if she would help them get elected. Although they did not have enough time to do a proper independent vet of her, some vetting was done. (Later they claimed they obtained one from the FBI, which the FBI subsequently denied doing.) They would have uncovered certain things that they would have questioned Palin about when she came down to meet McCain before he announced her as a candidate. Palin would have poured on the folksy charm and flirtatious manner. They would have been impressed with her charisma, but realized she wasn't the smartest person in the room and thus tragically underestimated her cunning. This is a frequent mistake when dealing with people on the psychopathic checklist. Thinking that she would be grateful to be mentored by McCain and politically astute enough to get ahead by being a team player, they felt that they had someone to appeal to the right wing base of the party. During the vetting questions, Palin, of course, would lie about everything, but at this point they didn't know that this is a defining trait of hers.</div><div><br /></div><div>The rumours about Trig would have been brought up and she would have convincingly laughed them off. (McCain's team was almost all men and they could have been taken in by the tight abs story, just as they wouldn't know why the wild ride story was next to impossible.) There were no rumours, at that time, about Bristol being pregnant with Tripp, so they wouldn't have asked her about it. When they asked her if there was anything they should know, which could come forward during the campaign and cause a problem, Sarah would have kept her mouth zipped. (There are other issues that may or may not come up at this time, such as Todd being a member of the Alaska independence party which could have come up or not and Palin would have responded in the same way, but that is not part of our story right now.)</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Having cleared the vetting process, there would have been brainstorming about how to handle what was seen as the few tricky issues. The Trig pregnancy rumours would be one of them - perhaps the most pressing. They would probably have asked her for Trig's birth certificate and Palin would have agreed that Todd could bring it with him (he would subsequently 'forget' it while getting the family ready to fly down). This is similar to when Palin announced in a joint interview with McCain that she would produce her medical records and McCain, who by this time knew or strongly suspected the real circumstances, looked surprised. One of Palin's tactics is to agree to produce something and then stonewall. To the team, however, showing the birth certificate would be viewed as being on the defensive. It would make far better political sense to have a picture, that showed an obviously pregnant Palin, quietly made available by someone who wasn't connected to the campaign. Palin probably offered Bill McAllister's help on the project and Todd was told to pack the black jacket, which he definitely didn't forget.</div><div><br /></div><div>Two to three more people had to be brought on board to pull this off. A wardrobe person, who would easily and discretely be able to get her hands on an empathy belly, sensible pregnancy shoes, the purple top and black maternity pants. Being a professional, she would have quickly had the jacket drycleaned and pressed. She would also have kept Palin's hair neat after the the hair person had finished styling it earlier. In keeping with being done by a professional, Palin's hair was properly washed and groomed; there was no back teasing. A photographer was needed, who could also have done the photoshopping afterwards. Or, that could have gone to a separate person. </div><div><br /></div><div>McAllister would have provided pictures and footage of Gusty that was either done earlier in the year and would work or he could, with the access his new position provided him, got the four of them into the legislation building after hours. Everyone was probably excited by the news; willing, or pressured, to do a favour for McAllister in his new job; and, possibly, thinking it could lead to a more lucrative position, if everything worked out right.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was an obvious problem. Sarah Palin had been losing weight over the summer and her face was noticeably thinner than it was earlier in the year. Morgan, in her analysis of the photographs, caught that when she found the pictures from that period where they lifted Palin's face from existing photos and put them in place on the new pictures. One was a shot from the LA film shoot and I can't remember where the other one originated from. If the pictures were staged in the spring, there wouldn't be a need to change the face. Morgan also noticed that Palin's body was different than the rest of the picture and, in the uncropped interview picture, the perspective of the rug and wall didn't line up, which suggested the camera man possibly had to be moved to get the picture to work.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once the pictures were deemed good enough - this would have been a rush job done in less then two days - the altered pictures were sent back to Alaska to discretely and quickly be uploaded on the internet. Here people choked. It was one thing to help out a former colleague, but quite another to be directly implicated. There had to be plausible denial in case anything went wrong. So the pictures went up on an anonymous account that had no other images on it. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>Does the above explanation of actions around the Gusty photos make it a conspiracy? No.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have learned through the years that jumping to conspiracies allows the individual on the check list to get off the hook. These people work by exploiting others through manipulation and coercion. The only people out of this group who would have known for sure that Sarah did not give birth to Trig would have been Sarah, herself, and Todd. All the others, to various degrees, probably did not know and would not think that what they were doing was so bad because, in their minds, it wasn't deliberating covering the truth. Nor would many of them be doing this for Palin. On the McCain side they would be doing it because it was their job and for the party. Gusty, the photographer, and the camera man probably did it as a favour to McAllister. After working for Palin for two months McAllister was probably compromised enough that he felt compelled to go along. What was he supposed to do? Tell the McCain team that Palin had lied to them? She would have fired him if he had done that or backed out in any way. </div><div><br /></div><div>Once they committed the first act of deception, wittingly or unwittingly, Palin would have a hold over them that she could use to coerce them into doing other things for her. Such as the story that Gusty did later on about the pictures and Morgan's blog.</div><div><br /></div><div>Besides, you have to be a team player to be part of a conspiracy and Sarah Palin has repeatedly shown that she is not capable of working with others.</div><div><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></div>vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1863839774455426457.post-76030297123998819172009-08-26T17:20:00.000-07:002009-08-26T17:23:40.882-07:00I have been commenting on the Palin's Deceptions blog and my comments are having trouble appearing in order. So I've gathered them together here.vera cityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07380051956155840612noreply@blogger.com0