In "The Princess Bride," there's one word that Vizzini uses repeatedly and inappropriately: "inconceivable." The problem, of course, that the circumstances that he describes as "inconceivable" are actually quite predictable, leading Inigo Montoya to eventually respond, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Likewise, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) may be equally confused.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday said he believed it was "inconceivable" that President Obama did not learn sooner about the Internal Revenue Service's political targeting of Tea Party groups.

"It's pretty inconceivable to me that the president wouldn't know," Boehner told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren.... "[W]ith as many people that were involved in the audit, the number of people involved in the investigation, somebody -- and the number of people in the White House that knew -- it really is inconceivable that he wouldn't have known about it," he added.

He keeps using that word, but I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

It really isn't inconceivable at all. The president is the chief executive of a very large federal bureaucracy, filled with all kinds of departments and agencies. He's also the president during a time of war and economic crises, so it stands to reason that Obama doesn't have a lot of time to micromanage a division of an IRS office in Cincinnati.

But maybe he knew of allegations that the division of an IRS office in Cincinnati was accused of using ill-advised standards when scrutinizing organizations seeking tax-exempt status? Boehner thinks it's "inconceivable" Obama wasn't aware of this; I think it's "inconceivable" that the Speaker of the House could seriously believe something so deeply silly -- why inform the president and raise the prospect of undermining the Inspector General's investigation? What would be the point?

Boehner believes it's significant that some White House officials were made aware of the probe -- why this is important remains a mystery to me -- but even these GOP talking points keep pushing Obama's critics further from their original goal of connecting the president to the controversy itself. As Jeffrey Toobin explained, "White House officials seem to have engaged in the opposite of a cover-up. They let the investigation proceed, and let the Inspector General do his job. They let the process play out. They played by the rules, which is what lawyers are supposed to do."

Which then leads us to the latest missive from a certain former half-term Alaska governor.

In an op-ed for Breitbart, Palin argues that President Obama should be held responsible for political targeting at the Internal Revenue Service and the formulation of talking points that suggested the Benghazi terror attack had grown spontaneously from a political protest even though there is little to link the West Wing to either.

"For the president to deny any knowledge of what was brewing and to claim to know nothing about the Benghazi cover-up or anything about anything White House-related lately, he's either a liar or a hugely incompetent CEO. You decide," Palin wrote.

And with this, the goalposts move a little further. The right started by arguing, "Why did Obama intervene in the IRS's activities?" This shifted recently to, "Why didn't Obama intervene in the IRS's activities?" And Palin is shifting it again, effectively asking, "Why didn't Obama know more about the IRS's activities?"

This is a more effective line of attack when we're talking about a president's entire Defense apparatus selling weapons to Iran to finance an illegal war in Nicaragua -- if the president didn't know, he should have -- but it makes a lot less sense if we're talking about a president's understanding of a division of an IRS office in Cincinnati.

One might even say it's inconceivable.

Getty Images

As a rule, I make a deliberate and conscious effort to ignore the former half-term governor of Alaska. But once in a great while, attention must be paid.

Like many conservative pundits, Sarah Palin is criticizing President Obama for his administration's inconsistent statements on the Benghazi, Libya, attack. Unlike many conservative pundits, Palin used the term "shuck and jive" to describe Obama's behavior.

In a Facebook post today, Palin wrote: "Obama's Shuck and Jive Ends With Benghazi Lies." She also used the term in the text of the post, which concludes, "President Obama's shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end."

Let's put aside, at least for now, the fact that the latest Benghazi revelations appear to be entirely uninteresting, and even the most unhinged White House critics are yet to document any administration "lies" associated with last month's attack.

Let's instead ponder a fairly straightforward, two-part question: "Shuck and jive"? Seriously?

It's quite possible that Palin just isn't informed enough to understand the phrase she used (more than once), so Alex Halperin referenced the Urban Dictionary:

To shuck and jive" originally referred to the intentionally misleading words and actions that African-Americans would employ in order to deceive racist Euro-Americans in power, both during the period of slavery and afterwards. The expression was documented as being in wide usage in the 1920s, but may have originated much earlier.

"Shucking and jiving" was a tactic of both survival and resistance. A slave, for instance, could say eagerly, "Oh, yes, Master," and have no real intention to obey. Or an African-American man could pretend to be working hard at a task he was ordered to do, but might put up this pretense only when under observation. Both would be instances of "doin' the old shuck 'n jive."

As Jeffrey Goldberg concluded, Palin's choice of words "isn't an example of a racist dog-whistle because it's too obviously racist to be considered code."

So last night we held our TRMS staff Christmas party at Bill's house, which I can tell you looks not much like the White House Christmas card to which Sarah Palin objects, nor to the Fox Business Christmas card so richly described on the show last night.

We came home to these add-ons from you. Regarding the first one, @word_34, it all depends on bringing a mirror to bear on the situation. Regarding the second, @LizCameron3, we had no idea. Seriously, no idea.

Last night, in the middle of the craziness that is producing live television, we all stopped for this exchange with Nicolle Wallace. She served as White House communications director under President George Bush and worked as a senior adviser to the McCain/Palin ticket in 2008. She also recently published a political novel called  It's Classified -- featuring a candidate for vice president whom Rachel described as "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs."

Midway through the interview, Rachel asked if she had any advice for Ms. Palin about getting into the 2012 Republican race. From the transcript:

NICOLLE WALLACE: She'd have to play by some of the normal conventions. And I think that will enrage her base of supporters. But the truth is the times are too dire to run as the man or woman for the right or the left.

I think that was the difficult lesson Obama learned and the price he's paying for pushing an agenda that appealed maybe too much to the left. People don't like that.

MADDOW: The left do not feel like they've gotten a lot.

WALLACE: I mean, he has the constitution to govern the whole country and he has missed an opportunity to do so with his policies. So, my advice for anyone, particularly for her -- and she has a whole nest of problems that would, you know, that she'd have to confront. But the first one would be to resist her most partisan and most polarizing instincts because that would make her the wrong candidate for the moment.

MADDOW: Does she have anything to offer beyond that?

WALLACE: Look, you know, I was inspired by her to write a book about someone who was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. So don't ask me.

I guess that would be the "clef" part of roman a clef. Below, straight out of the Saturday morning cartoons, the yummy chocolatey taste that's a healthy part of a great breakfast.

Sarah Palin just posted a special message for the House Republican freshmen. I'm in it for the post-script, which I think really is the point.

Out here in proverbial politico flyover country, we little folk are watching the debt ceiling debate with great interest and concern. Today I re-read the open letter I wrote to Republican Freshman Members of Congress in November 2010, just days after they were ushered into office in an historic landslide victory due in large part to the activism of commonsense patriots who are considered part of the Tea Party movement. I respectfully ask these GOP Freshman to re-read this letter and remember us “little people” who believed in them, donated to their campaigns, spent hours tirelessly volunteering for them, and trusted them with our votes. This new wave of public servants may recall that they were sent to D.C. for such a time as this.

The original letter is pasted below, with added emphasis to certain passages that I feel are especially relevant to the current discussion. 

All my best to you, GOP Freshmen, from up here in the Last Frontier.

Sincerely,

Sarah Palin

P.S. Everyone I talk to still believes in contested primaries.

Translation: Careful out there. Ms. Palin follows this with the original November 2010 note, now marked up so the GOP freshmen can see the important parts.

From 2012IowaCaucus.com

The only candidate getting better known and more popular.

A new survey of Iowa Republicans finds Mitt Romney leading with 21 percent, followed by Sarah Palin and Herman Cain at 15 percent. "No one is really becoming more popular with Iowa Republicans as they become better known except Herman Cain," Public Policy Polling reports. "His net favorability is up 8 points, no one else's is up more than a point."

Nate Silver argues that we've not had a candidate quite like Mr. Cain before, who polled strongly despite have little experience in politics. He continues to say Mr. Cain's got a chance.

Bonus finds (pdf): Iowa Republicans still aren't convinced President Obama was born in the United States, and in that crowd, Sarah Palin's the pick.

We can see Sarah Palin's bus outside our windows, parked over by the FOX News headquarters.

Before things get all serious again this week, consider Sarah Palin going full Ride of the Valkyries at the Rolling Thunder motorcycle gathering where she was not invited and not particularly welcome. Somehow, according to the New York Times, we're supposed to believe Ms. Palin's One Nation bus tour is a pretense of a family vacation. We're going to need a new word for that, a pretense of a pretense. We love the smell of pretense in the morning.

(Looking spiffy in its new redesign, Think Progress calculates the actual emissions involved, etc.)