Sarah’s Greyhound Really a Gulfstream (jet, that is)

Let’s refocus here, people. Just because a couple of wingnuts crashed a party in Washington, and some athlete, who shall remain nameless, crashed his pretty car and admitted to a few indiscretions; or, just because our President kinda let us think he was gonna do something really brave and order the withdrawal of troops from an unwinnable war but instead decided, what the hell, let’s give it one more go on the taxpayer’s dime. Let’s not lose sight of the really important news that went from front page to page 9 a little too quickly--Sarah Palin’s bogus bus tour.

Oh yeah, there’s a bus alright and sure enough, it’s got her larger-than-life picture plastered on the sides, and it is parked outside each venue she visits to sign that humdinger of a book everyone is jonesing to have in their library. I’m sorry, did I say everyone? Maybe that was a bit of an overstatement. But there is a book tour and there is a book and there is a bus with one lonely-ass bus driver, and now, there’s a jet. No wait, there is more than one jet. There are a couple of jets that just happen to be in the towns where Palin is signing her books and from which she and her entourage disembark and are whisked back upon that fancy trailer away from home and driven the couple miles or so to the next signing.

In case you haven’t heard, one of the jets she flew into Asheville, NC for her Sunday-go-to-prayer-and-political-strategy-meetin’ with the Reverend Billy Graham and his son, Franklin Graham, is owned by none other than the organization known as Samaritan’s Purse. Who, you ask? Oh, that would be one of the charitable organizations owned by the Graham family. That organization actually owns 4 planes and one of them just happens to be a Beech 300 with the N-Number N262SP. Yep, the one that got Sarah to dinner on time in Asheville.

Now, the reason we mentioned this is, do the good folks who are giving their money to this charitable organization know that their dollars are being spent to fly the Palin party in style? Straight from the Samaritan’s Purse web page that discusses Financial Accountability, we find this:

“Because the Lord supplies us with resources for ministry through individual contributions, we recognize our accountability both to Him and to our donors. We have a responsibility to be faithful stewards and to maintain integrity and openness in our financial practices. Therefore, we are committed to fulfilling the following standards…Our fund-raising appeals clearly identify the purpose and programs to which donations will be applied, and we ensure that donations are used for the purposes for which they were raised…Occasionally, we receive more contributions for a given project than can be wisely applied to that project. When that happens, we use these funds to meet a similar pressing need. Our policy is to meet the needs God lays before us, so that Christ is lifted up and the Gospel advanced.”

Can we assume that some project received way more money than necessary and it was deemed that the funds were used on the pressing need of not only lifting Christ up, but also lifting Ms. Palin and her entourage up to and from dinner at the Graham abode, because without her presence, the Gospel could not be as advanced as they would like? But if the Graham family doesn’t have a problem with accountability, why then did Franklin Graham have the flight activity for the plane blocked in the FAA records? Hmm? I’m gonna give credit where credit is due on this one. A reader of the Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis Blog out of Alaska found the jet information after viewing a video of Palin touching down in Asheville, NC. If you go to that website, you’ll see the video and his comments.

Oh, one other thought. If Ms. Palin thought it was too extravagant to have a private jet while Governor of Alaska (remember, she made one heck of a scene out of how she was selling that darned awful jet on E-bay so that she wouldn’t look like a spendthrift), what, pray tell, changed her mind this time around? Is all that attention and fame going to her head as it would many? Nothing to be ashamed of, but at some point in time, she’s gonna have to change her “down-to-earth, homespun” façade to catch up to the new, improved hoity-toity Sarah Palin who thinks it’s ok to leave approximately 300 book buyers, who stood out in the cold for as long as 7 hours in Noblesville, Indiana, high and dry because she just couldn’t sign any more books. It ain’t no big deal, right? To her defense, she did apologize…a day later after the damage had been done. You never disappoint, Sarah.