Photo of the Day: Cheat Sheet Edition

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Sarah Palin is a PR genius. The same way that Madonna is a PR genius or Al Sharpton is a PR genius. No matter how tired we get of them, somehow they always figure out a way to keep themselves in the public eye.

Yesterday Palin delivered a routine stemwinder to a medium sized crowd and managed to get a ton of publicity for it. But that’s not all! It turns out that last night’s speculation was right: she really did have a cheat sheet on the palm of her hand that she consulted during the softball Q&A after the speech. Just like your average seventh grader taking an algebra test. Has any politician in history ever done this before?

And even the notes themselves are fascinating. Here’s what she wrote down:

Energy

Budget Tax Cuts

Lift American Spirits

The most obvious question is: why would anyone need to write this stuff down? It’s not like she’s trying to remember the quadratic equation or anything. For someone who swims in the seas that Palin swims in, this is about the equivalent of writing down a note to remember your birthday.

But enough mockery. At this blog we prefer a more high-minded, policy-oriented critique of our major politicians. So here it is: it turns out that Sarah Palin doesn’t believe in budget cuts. In fact, she went to the trouble of deliberately crossing it out. Just like every other garden variety faux fiscally conservative Republican, she doesn’t really want to cut the budget because that runs the risk of annoying some interest group or another. She only wants to cut taxes. Normally, though, we don’t have graphological proof of this. With Palin, now we do.

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Owned by no one—except you.

We just keep seeing it happen: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.

Not here. We’re not owned by anyone. We’re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. We’ve spoken up and spoken out while other newsrooms changed their stories—or cut them altogether—to keep the C suite happy.

Our mission is to find the truth and amplify it. That’s why we’re independent, nonprofit, and, crucially, funded by readers. The investigations on our website will always be free to read, watch, and listen to, but our newsroom is powered by readers who pitch in what they can so we can keep asking the hard questions.

Can you chip in today?

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