Facebook's questionnaire to identify trustworthy news sources leaves a lot to be desired.

Courtesy of BuzzFeed:  

Last week, Facebook said its News Feed would prioritize links from publications its users deemed "trustworthy" in an upcoming survey. Turns out that survey isn't a particularly lengthy or nuanced one. In fact, it's just two questions. 

Here is Facebook's survey — in its entirety: 

Do you recognize the following websites

• Yes 
• No 

How much do you trust each of these domains?

• Entirely 
• A lot 
• Somewhat 
• Barely 
• Not at all 

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed this as the only version of the survey in use. They also confirmed that the questions were prepared by the company itself and not by an outside party.

Uh....is that it?

Do you want InfoWars to be listed as a trusted news outlet.

Because this is how you get InfoWars listed as a trusted news outlet.

Right Wingers and Russian trolls will simply flood the questionnaire with responses and we will end up with Alex Jones, Russia Today, and the White House web page as the only sources listed on our Facebook news feed.

Donald Trump, hater of "fake news," once served as a source for stories in the National Enquirer, even had his own byline.

This comes from a rather expansive story in The New Yorker focused on Trump's relationship with the CEO of American Media, and publisher of the National Enquirer,  David Pecker: 

In the eighties and early nineties, Trump was something of a fixture in the Enquirer, thanks to his multiple marriages. A typical headline from 1990 read “trump’s mistress cheats on donald with tom cruise.” But, once Pecker took over, critical coverage of Trump vanished. “They have an agreement where David would not write anything that damages Donald,” a senior A.M.I. official from this period told me. 

One employee said that Trump was also a frequent source for Enquirer stories. “When there was something going on in New York, David would talk with Trump about it. Trump provided David with stories directly,” the employee said. “And, if Donald didn’t want a story to run, it wouldn’t run. You can put that in stone.” Indeed, early in the 2016 campaign Pecker simply turned over the pages of the Enquirer to Trump, allowing the candidate to write columns under his own byline. 

So apparently NBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, are all hotbeds of fake news, but a magazine that once ran the headline "sociopath’ Hillary Clinton’s secret psych files exposed!" is perfectly respectable?

In fact as it turns out the Enquirer is essentially Trump's own supermarket propaganda outlet:  

Throughout the 2016 Presidential race, the Enquirer embraced Trump with sycophantic fervor. The magazine made its first political endorsement ever, of Trump, last spring. Cover headlines promised, “donald trump’s revenge on hillary & her puppets” and “top secret plan inside: how trump will win debate!” The publication trashed Trump’s rivals, running a dubious cover story on Ted Cruz that described him as a philanderer and another highly questionable piece that linked Cruz’s father to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 

It was even tougher on Hillary Clinton, regularly printing such headlines as “ ‘sociopath’ hillary clinton’s secret psych files exposed!” A 2015 piece began, “Failing health and a deadly thirst for power are driving Hillary Clinton to an early grave, The National Enquirer has learned in a bombshell investigation. The desperate and deteriorating 67-year-old won’t make it to the White House—because she’ll be dead in six months.” On election eve, the Enquirer offered a special nine-page investigation under the headline “hillary: corrupt! racist! criminal!” This blatantly skewed coverage continued after Trump took office. Post-election cover stories included “trump takes charge! success in just 36 days!” and “proof obama wiretapped trump! lies, leaks & illegal bugging.”

We of course already knew some of this, but what we did not know is that Trump and Pecker are such close friends that Pecker used to be a frequent guest on Trump's private plane, and that he has been covering for Trump for years.

This is what he told the Gus Wenner, of Wenner Media: 

"He told me very bluntly that he had killed all sorts of stories for Trump. He hired a girl to be a columnist when she threatened to go public with a story about Donald.”

Pecker then denied that he had ever admitted that, however the writer of this article, Jeffrey Toobin, asked about it point blank and this was his response:

When I asked Pecker about McDougal, who was Playboy’s Playmate of the Year in 1998, he told me that he first met her when she modelled for the cover of Men’s Fitness, another A.M.I. magazine. “When her people contacted me that she had a story on Trump, everybody was contacting her,” he said. “At the same time, she was launching her own beauty-and-fragrance line, and I said that I’d be very interested in having her in one of my magazines, now that she’s so famous.” But Pecker had a condition for hiring her: “Once she’s part of the company, then on the outside she can’t be bashing Trump and American Media.” 

I pointed out that bashing Trump was not the same as bashing American Media. 

“To me it is,” Pecker replied. “The guy’s a personal friend of mine.”

Now all of this might seem a little frivolous, after all who takes the National Enquirer seriously?

However currently Pecker is working out a deal to buy Time Inc., which would put him at the helm of Time, People, and Fortune magazines, which he would of course then turn into propaganda outlets for Trump as well.

Also keep in mind that this is not the ONLY media CEO that Trump plays footsies with, he has a similar relationship with Rupert Murdoch of Fox News, and of course we know where Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News currently spends his days.

Essentially Trump has taken what Roger Ailes did to insert partisanship into news coverage and amplified it.

So now consumers have a choice, they can either tune into Trump truths, or instead consume fact based "fake news" reported by ethical journalists.

And let's face it, a whole lot of Americans simply cannot tell the difference.

Intelligence sources reveal that Russian operatives discussed having "derogatory" information about Donald Trump during 2016 election.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Russian government officials discussed having potentially "derogatory" information about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and some of his top aides in conversations intercepted by US intelligence during the 2016 election, according to two former intelligence officials and a congressional source. 

One source described the information as financial in nature and said the discussion centered on whether the Russians had leverage over Trump's inner circle. The source said the intercepted communications suggested to US intelligence that Russians believed "they had the ability to influence the administration through the derogatory information.

"But the sources, privy to the descriptions of the communications written by US intelligence, cautioned the Russian claims to one another "could have been exaggerated or even made up" as part of a disinformation campaign that the Russians did during the election. The details of the communication shed new light on information US intelligence received about Russian claims of influence. 

The contents of the conversations made clear to US officials that Russia was considering ways to influence the election -- even if their claims turned out to be false. 

None of the sources would say which specific Trump aides were discussed. One of the officials said the intelligence report masked the American names but it was clear the conversations revolved around the Trump campaign team. Another source would not give more specifics, citing the classified nature of the information.

The sources are careful to suggest that the Russians could have been exaggerating this evidence, but considering what we have learned so far, and now seen Trump do since entering the White House, do we really think they had to exaggerate it that much?

At this point the only thing that could further indicate that Trump is Putin's little bitch is if he had that tattooed on his lower back.

And let's face it, for all we know he does.

By the way this is just more information that supports the findings in that Russian dossier which the Trump folks keep insisting is filled with false information.

Which is, as you might have guessed, exactly how they responded to THIS report from CNN: A White House spokesman told CNN: 

"This is yet another round of false and unverified claims made by anonymous sources to smear the President. The reality is, a review of the President's income from the last ten years showed he had virtually no financial ties at all. There appears to be no limit to which the President's political opponents will go to perpetuate this false narrative, including illegally leaking classified material. All this does is play into the hands of our adversaries and put our country at risk."

If this is all a "false narrative" then why is Trump now lawyering up?

Keith Olbermann reports on a blog post of Louise Mensch asserting that the FBI has taped evidence of Trump colluding with the Russians.

NEW: Have the Brits already nailed Trump? On tape? Offering to trade policy changes to Putin for election fixing? pic.twitter.com/ywNs84QIKo

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) April 18, 2017

Here is the assertion as written on Patribotics by Louise Mensch: 

Sources with links to the intelligence community say it is believed that Carter Page went to Moscow in early July carrying with him a pre-recorded tape of Donald Trump offering to change American policy if he were to be elected, to make it more favorable to Putin. In exchange, Page was authorized directly by Trump to request the help of the Russian government in hacking the election.

The post goes into far more detail and refers to previous posts to provide context, but that first paragraph right there is quite jaw dropping.

Now to be honest though I have been following Mensch on Twitter for quite awhile now I have hesitated to directly quote her or link to her posts because, well to be honest, because I was not certain of her trustworthiness as a reporter of facts.

In my defense many of the claims that Mensch makes are explosive, and would completely change the narrative about Trump's interaction with Russia.

However they are also often supported by anonymous sources, and though Mensch WAS the first person to report on the FISA court order, I remain somewhat skeptical that she has sources telling her things that the sources for the New York Times and Washington Post are keeping to themselves.

So I will present this here as a public service and invite your to hear what Olbermann says, and read Mensch's post, and then reach your own conclusions as to their validity.

The New York Times reveals the names of the two White House sources who gave Devin Nunes that information that he rushed to tell Donald Trump.

Oh, so the press can find that kind of stuff out huh?

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

A pair of White House officials played a role in providing Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies. 

The revelation that White House officials assisted in the disclosure of the intelligence reports — which Mr. Nunes then discussed with President Trump — is likely to fuel criticism that the intelligence chairman has been too eager to do the bidding of the Trump administration while his committee is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation of Russia’s meddling in the last presidential election. 

Mr. Nunes has also been faulted by his congressional colleagues for sharing the information with President Trump before consulting with other members of the intelligence committee.

Nunes has repeatedly refused to identify his sources, but that did not stop the NYT.

Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee. 

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

So to be clear the information that Devin Nunes rushed to the White House to deliver to Donald Trump was given to him by two people who were already in the White House.

I am not a security expert but I have to ask, why in the hell didn't these people simply tell Donald Trump this information themselves, and leave Nunes out of it?

Why all the cloak and dagger?

Is it because the information is bullshit and the White House did not want their name attached to it?

By the way apparently after he was fired by Trump's national security adviser Ezra Cohen-Watnick went running to The Donald who overruled that decision.

Well now isn't THAT interesting?

And as WaPo points out things just got a whole lot worse for Nunes: 

This conflicts with what Nunes has apparently said about his source or sources. He has declined to name them, but he and a spokesman have reportedly said and/or strongly suggested it wasn't White House staff. 

Nunes reportedly told Bloomberg's Eli Lake in an interview Monday “that his source was not a White House staffer and was an intelligence official," Lake wrote. 

A Nunes spokesman, Jack Langer, also told the Los Angeles Times that it wasn’t a White House staffer, the Times reported. 

And Nunes again appeared to deny meeting with any White House aides in a Monday afternoon interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer: 

BLITZER: In addition going to that secure room to look over these documents, do you have other meetings at the White House? Did you meet with the president or any of his aides while you were there that night? 

NUNES: No. And in fact, I'm quite sure that people in the West Wing had no idea I was there.

Well look at that, yet another Trump supporter gets caught in a lie.

So I have two questions:

Why is this guy still the House Intelligence Committee Chairman again?

And aren't we glad we have a Senate Intelligence Committee? 

Straight from the Wilds of Wasilla. "It's a boy!"

So a little bird told me that Track's newest baby mama is expecting a boy.

That's right another Palin male is about to enter the world (I imagine Wasilla shudders in anticipation.)

Track and Jordan are currently cohabiting somewhere in Wasilla (Probably that same house next to the 'rents that Track has been living in since he returned from his time cementing Sarah's "Mother of combat veteran" credibility.), and no I don't know when the big wedding is supposed to take place, but likely after yet another Palin baby is born out of wedlock.

After all that's how they do it in the 'Silla.

(P.S. If your immediate assumption is that this story comes from the Johnstons, you should probably know that I have a number of sources in the Valley. And trying to shut down one source, does not shut down all sources.)

Well it was fun while it lasted.

I have been watching this MALOE thing with some interest for awhile now.

And up until recently, though I had my doubts, I was willing to just let it play itself out.

However things have started to get out of control, with whole comment sections being taken over by those accusing MALOE of being fake, and those coming to MALOE's defense.

Uncool.

Anyhow for the record MALOE is clearly not who she/he says they are.

Despite what many of you seem to think, Blogger does not offer a simple method for tracking the source of a comment, or identifying the ISP number, or the location of the commenters.

However if needed I do have other tools at my disposal.

Up until now I just never felt the need to take the time to investigate the source.

That changed at 4:30 AM Alaska time this morning when I received a comment from MALOE.

Now typically I do not receive too many comments that early in the morning, and rarely any at all from Alaska. (Most of us are sleeping.)

So I did a quick check and sure enough there was nothing during that time frame coming from Wasilla, and in fact the only Alaskan visit had come from Juneau and it was several minutes earlier.

So sorry to rain on everybody's parade, but it appears that MALOE has been yanking you.

I first suspected that was the case when they refused to contact me via e-mail, even after several of you encouraged them to do so.

I have, by the way, talked to other members of Palin's extended family. And the reason that you have never heard about that is because I do not out my sources.

Ever.

So if there ARE any legitimate people with stories to tell, I think I have proven that I am the safest person with whom to share those stories.

P.S. If this MALOE person thinks I am being unfair, or has proof I am wrong, I am more than willing to communicate with them and take all of this back if proven incorrect.

Until then all posts from MALOE will be marked as spam and no longer shared here on IM.

As promised here is a follow up to Track Palin's arrest for domestic violence.

Here is a better picture to replace the crappy one I had before.

So as I am sure all of you know we, and apparently everybody else, reported yesterday that Track Palin had been arrested for getting drunk and punching a woman in the face.

We now know for certain that the woman was his girlfriend of one year, Jordan Loewe.

Here is more courtesy of the AP: 

According to the three-page affidavit, both Palin and his girlfriend called 911 that night. Police Officer Andrew Kappler wrote that he arrived at the Wasilla home and found Track Palin walking outside and talking on a phone. The officer said Palin had an injury to his right eye and surrounding area, smelled strongly of alcohol and acted with escalating hostility, prompting Kappler to put him in handcuffs. 

Police say a breath sample provided by Palin showed he had a blood alcohol level of 0.189. 

The affidavit says other officers found the girlfriend hiding under a bed inside the home and crying. 

The argument continued at the home, according to the affidavit, which says Palin struck the woman with his fist on the left side of her head near her eye. She curled up in the fetal position because she didn't know what else he would do, the woman told police. She said he then kicked her in the knee and threw her phone across the driveway, according to the court document. The woman said she went inside after getting her phone. 

Inside, Palin held the rifle, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side, the affidavit states. The affidavit adds that the woman told police Palin was yelling "Do you think I won't do it?" 

The girlfriend "was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house," the affidavit says. "She didn't see where Palin went, so she went inside and up the stairs, where she hid under a bed."

So now we learn that Track had a blood alcohol level of 0.189, which is considered legally drunk, and then some.

Here is a little more detail from Alaska news station KTVA:

The woman claimed Track Palin was calling her names, and in an effort to calm him down and “to scare him away from ‘touching her,’” she told him she had called the police. 

“Palin approached [the woman] and struck her on the left side of her head near her eye with a closed fist,” police said in court documents. “Palin then kicked [her] on the right knee.” 

The woman said he then grabbed her phone, which was on the ground next to her, and threw it across the driveway. She was able to retrieve the phone and headed inside the residence. Track Palin was reportedly already inside the residence and had a gun. She said he yelled, “do you think I won’t do it,” among other things, and was holding the gun in a way she believed he would kill himself. She ran out and then went and hid, police said. 

Track Palin denied using a weapon during the altercation, “but stated that they were spread throughout both residences on the property,” police noted. 

Track Palin had an injury on his face he claimed was caused when she “threw a bow,” or her elbow, at his face. The woman had a visible head injury, according to police, and was complaining of pain in her leg.

The takeaway was that Track was clearly out of control and assaulted this young woman repeatedly, and placed her in fear for her safety and his.

And I have to say the statement that there were guns "spread throughout both residences on the property" concerns me since we know that young children are on those premises at all hours of the day and night.

Alaska Dispatch added more detail about what started the altercation:  

Palin told police he and the woman had been arguing over her communication with an ex-boyfriend. 

“This angered Palin,” the affidavit says. “He stated that they had been arguing for most of the night.” 

According to the affidavit, Palin told detectives the two had gone to dinner, then to his sister’s house and later to a piece of property he was considering buying. There, he said, they began to argue again. Palin accused the woman of driving drunk back to his sister's house, leaving him to walk back from the property. 

The affidavit said the two later drove back to Palin’s parents’ house and continued to argue. Palin told police they argued verbally and that the woman “threw a ‘bow,” meaning an elbow, and that was how his face was injured. 

 The woman also said the two had been arguing for the better part of the night, and in the driveway of the Palin family home.

For more on what happened you can visit Gawker and read the entire police report.

Now I was contacted by my sources in Wasilla last night as well, and I have a little more detail to add.

According to them after Jordan drove Track to the Palin compound, she tried to leave and Track threw himself on her windshield to prevent her from leaving.

It was then that he also pulled that gun, only according to my sources he put the barrel in his mouth and threatened to blow his brains out. They also identified this weapon, not as an assault rifle, but as a pistol.

However when she got out of the car that is when he assaulted her by punching and kicking her.

They were both hammered and Jordan was sobbing uncontrollable, and of course Track is barely coherent even when he is not drunk.

So there you have it, Palin family values once again on display for the whole world to see.

And while all of this was going on Track's parents were all the way down in the lower forty eight endorsing Donald Trump, because Sarah Palin is the very embodiment of conservative values and Christian morality.

Happy New Year IMers!

So last year is gone, and it was fun, but now we are off to see what 2016 has in store for us.

One thing I know for sure is that there will be some big surprises coming from IM this year, and I think a number of you will be pleasantly surprised with my ability to keep a secret.

And I also know that some trolls are going to be gnashing their teeth and pulling out whole handfuls of hair once this other shoe drops.

Just giving you all a heads up. 

An IM source from the past revealed.

Recently I happened to stumble across a post I wrote way back in 2010.

It was a very informative post, but at the time I had to keep my source secret because he was not ready to come out publicly. Which of course was not uncommon back then.

However this source, Sarah Palin's head of security Gary Wheeler, DID come out publicly in order to contribute to Joe's book "The Rogue."

It dawned on me while reading this old post, that knowing who had been my source really gave it much more of an impact.

So I thought I would go ahead and reprint the entire post right here for all of you to enjoy again, with the added knowledge that the person who provided the information is no longer just a shadowy figure.

It's kind of long so I will place it behind this page break in the interest of space. Enjoy!

Okay so let's talk gossip.

So yesterday a bunch of you sent me a link to an article on Celebitchy concerning Bristol Palin.

Now the article itself was addressing that post on the Daily Mail about Levi and Bristol having resolved their custody issues, which of course we all know to be bullshit.

However what was interesting about the post was not the article itself, but rather what showed up in the comments section:  

mimif says: 

October 22, 2015 at 11:58 am 

Cannot tolerate these assholes. A woman I know had an affair with Todd Palin’s brother, James, and oh lawd the tea she spilled. Screen caps and all.

Wait, what?

Other commenters asked for more, and more is exactly what they got:

mimif says: October 22, 2015 at 2:42 pm 

Sorry! I completely spaced out. Okay, I have to be kind of delicate because… f-ck it. 

So my bf is a commercial fisherman up in Bristol Bay (occasionally I crew for him), and he fishes alongside Todd Palin in the summer. Additionally, one of our good friends is a longtime Palin family friend (we constantly tease him but by all accounts he swears Todd is a good dude), so I always get the insider stories and it’s why my face turns purple every time there is a post about them here. Anyhow, the year the Palins had their stupid documentary Sarah and her brood were crawling all over the town we fish out of. This town is teeny tiny btw, there is like zero anonymity. It’s also a very pro-Palin town too, as they have Alaska Native roots there, so one does not speak unkindly of them in public. A friend of mine starts telling me that she’s boinking James Palin, and I was like, yeah whatever, who cares. And then she starts telling me these stories…like super lurid stories of shit that he was into, stuff you wouldn’t make up unless you were a sociopath, but I was busy fishing and couldn’t be bothered. So THEN, she starts sending me screen caps of their FB convos and dude, a) the guy is a total dog (supposedly on a trial separation from his wife, whom eventually divorced him), b) not even going into the sexual details because it makes me want to com (NASTY), but c) he talked so much shit about Sarah it was unreal. That she was cheating on Todd (apparently James and Sarah had a fling too, something about being a knob gobbler, but she broke it off), she’s a total drunk who lets her kids do whatever they want, Bristol is the town bicycle and the rumors about Sarah’s last baby being Bristol’s were true, how her thirst for fame completely destroyed Todd & Sarah’s marriage, talk about swinging…should I go on? He sounded like a jilted lover, he totally despised her. So take that all with a grain of salt, people. 

Then this douche James invited my friend to Hawaii with his kids, wanted to marry her, (also wanted to f-ck her friends) guy was just a piece of work. FWIW, my friend isn’t exactly playing with a full deck so he was 100% taking advantage of her. Ick. The whole family is revolting. From personally experience, Sarah is a hag. Literally. I’ve met her more than once and her voice makes me want to rip my hair out. The End. 

P.S. I’m mad at all of you now for making me type that out AND I’m going to hell.

And then there was more: 

mimif says: October 22, 2015 at 3:00 pm 

Lol knob gobbler is pretty good, but I’m still mad at you (also keep remembering more tidbits!). It’s not too much of a stretch tho, is it? I mean, she’s just a horrible person, and so is her daughter. My bf’s FB feed is a gem of info, too, as most of his buddies are Alaskan. Very few people (outside some of the rural villages) hold them with any kind of regard. They are a disgrace to the great state of Alaska and I can’t wait for them to go far, far away. RANT OVER. 

ETA omg I can’t edit my OG post. **makes me want to VOM, not com. That sounds so wrong. 😫

And even more:

mimif says: October 22, 2015 at 3:38 pm 

I’m trying to remember what year this was…2009 or 2010, so back when Palin was kind of a big deal (to some folks). But yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if James Palin started the whole Sarah pretended to have Bristol’s baby rumor, dude was out to get her. Which was equally odd because he was technically working for her/part of her entourage, not to mention her BIL.

After that this MimiF person started talking about other topics before stating that her boyfriend was mad at her for divulging what she did and then she clammed up for good.

So the first thing I have to mention is that this is a gossip site and one should always take posts by commenters with a big ole grain of salt. However the thing that kept catching my eye was this talk about Todd's brother James.

And the reason why is because it closely matched what my own source had once told me in great detail about this particular family member, whom she referred to as JD.

According to her he was a full blown alcoholic, and sexual deviant, who was considered the black sheep even in a family almost made up entirely of black sheep.

Some of the things she told me were even too graphic for an adult blog like this.

You may remember that in this post my source had told me that the entire family had dealt with substance abuse problems, but what I did not say at the time is that she felt JD, or James if you will, had the worst problems of all.

There was a reason at the time that I did not focus on JD, and it had to do with the identity of my source. At the time we had agreed that she would eventually come out of the shadows and talk openly, but then the Palins essentially shut her up and that was that.

Now the one thing about MimiF's comments that I do not necessarily agree with is her statement that Trig was actually Bristol's child.

The reason for that is due to the fact that my other sources cannot account for a time where Bristol was MIA long enough to have been pregnant and then given birth without their knowledge.

Now they will say that she could have been pregnant up to a year or more earlier, but that around the beginning of 2008 they saw Bristol quite frequently.

Trust me, these folks would NOT cover for Bristol or the Palin family as there is NO love lost between them.

As for the deviant sex and talk of affairs? Oh yeah that matches perfectly.

No Track Palin did not cut brake lines on school buses, and other misinformation about the Palins.

So several people sent me this link  

yesterday: just ask me I am happy to repeat that yes they are. I will gladly tell how Sara's son and also his Best friend who was Bristols Boyfriend at the time and their gang vandalized our bus barn in our community that had just been refurbished and given a beautiful facelift. They broke several windows, broke in stole stuff and broke windows in some of the buses as well and busted water pipes etc. They caused thousands of dollars of damage just to be asshats that was years ago but I am still angry about it. 

I will glady say how Sarah is a racist piggy oink and how Bristol was a brat when she was younger and is still a brat. 

Oh I can confirm it all and more.

So yes this is in fact one of the things that Track got into trouble over, and which his mother had swept under the rug.

However this is all he did. He did NOT cut brake lines on the buses. Despite what you might read on the internet.

And while we are at it let's clear up a few other bits of misinformation swirling around the web as well.

Track's daughter, Kyla Grace Palin, that he had with Britta, IS in fact his kid and not one of Bristol's from a previous unannounced pregnancy.

In fact one of the reasons that I first suspected she was pregnant, after that quicky wedding up at Hatcher Pass, was because Dennis Zaki happened to see her in either a Wal-Mart or Carrs in Wasilla and she was clearly pregnant. (This was well before those baby shower pictures showed up online.)

Let's see what else?

Oh.

No Bristol NEVER had mono. This was confirmed by Mercede quite a few years ago, and reconfirmed by several sources since.

It was featured in the original Daily Kos story as the reason that Bristol missed so much school in Anchorage, but so far I have been unable to determine if even that part was completely accurate.

Speaking of Bristol she did NOT name Tripp after Shailey Tripp.

He was named after the character Trip Carlyle, in one of Levi's favorite movies, Supercross.

It is just another one of those crazy coincidences that seem to occur around the Palins with alarming frequency.

And finally no Bristol has not already given birth to her newest baby bump. And yes she is indeed pregnant.

As far as I have been told the blessed event is not until some time in December.

And no I don't secretly know who the father is, and I have heard that Bristol is not telling anybody anything.

And one more thing, I NEVER said that "the truth about Trig's birth is too terrible or shocking to tell." That was attributed to some other person several years ago and for some reason I have been saddled with it despite several corrections.

Oh, and I don't have any evidence that it is accurate either.

Just a final thought for all of you to keep in mind.

People say all kinds of things on the internet, and often they are total bullshit.

Just because somebody says something with authority, and I don't bother to correct it, does not make it a factual statement.

Source close to Sarah Palin (Does his name rhyme with "odd?") slams Glenn Beck over his recent remarks. Update!

So as we all remember Glenn Beck recently came out and said that he was embarrassed that he had ever supported Sarah Palin, and even referred to her as a clown.

Which for most of us seemed a day late and a dollar short.

Then, possibly due to backlash or some ex-alcoholic's misplaced remorse, Beck backed off the clown comment, but stuck with his initial criticism.

Beck explained his change of heart in a long, rather slobbery, Facebook post that whined about Palin cutting him off and no longer wanting to be besties: 

I haven't had a relationship with Sarah since about the time of the shooting of Gabby Giffords. Nothing to do with that at all, but it was around that time that she withdrew from me and my team and it was because, as Todd told me on the phone, "we have been told who our real friends are." I was stunned. I had backed her hard in every way I knew how. At that time I really believed in her and in fact I really believed she had the ability to change the world for the better. 

While I have reached out since we have not spoken in an any meaningful way since. 

I don't know what they were told or by whom, but I can guess as it most likely was the same person that tried to drive a stake through my relationship with mark Levin and Sean Hannity and did for several years.

Now when I read all of this I figured that we were due for another wildly incoherent Facebook post slamming Beck for being a backstabbing crybaby.

But the whole weekend went by and.....nothing.

Until today.

However instead of firing up the old ghostwriter Palin has one her "sources" (Todd) contact Breitbart.

And this is what they said:

“The rift between Gov. Palin and Beck goes back to when Beck violated her trust by reading one of her private emails on the air without asking her permission,” the source tells Breitbart News. “It was right after the Gabby Giffords shooting, and Beck garnered a lot of publicity off of reading the email because up to that point Gov. Palin had not spoken publicly about the shooting.” 

The rift apparently got worse when Beck allowed one of his Blaze TV employees, Brian Sack, to trash Palin’s family and special needs son Trig in a crude segment with Beck lavishing praise on Sack as “the next Jon Stewart.”

But wait, there's more.

“The crux of the issue was his indiscretion in reading a private email on air. It was a betrayal of trust. She didn’t give consent to having it read publicly and never would have. There was a media firestorm brewing around her at the time. Everyone in the media was hounding her for a statement, but she was very clear that she wanted to wait, get all the facts, and give her full statement at a time and place of her own choosing. What Beck did totally disregarded her wishes,” the source added. “He’s shown that he has little regard for the feelings of anyone unless they’re useful to his ambitions or point of view.”

I speak Palinese, as you know,  so allow me to translate.

"Glenn Beck is a chubby booger brain, who did not jump through the hoops we held up for him. However we would never have attacked him over it in a way that could have been traced back to us. So his recent unprovoked attacks on the mother of both a combat veteran and a Down syndrome angel straight from heaven are completely unwarranted and only reveal him to be an impotent Nancy boy."

For his part Beck is apparently unraveling (Yet again) and threatening to pack up his dog and pony show and head off into the sunset.

Didn't he already do that when he left Fox News?

Update: Okay here is Glenn Beck talking about the e-mail back in 2011:  

Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer. I know you are felling the same heat, if not much more on this,” Beck wrote. 

Beck expressed concern about Palin’s safety, and urged her to hire the same Los Angeles-based security firm that he uses. 

The rhetoric of both Beck and Palin has been cited by both liberals and some of the mainstream media as examples of the kind of overheated political discourse that, if not directly connected to the Tucson shooting, has created an environment in which a similar thing might happen again. 

“I hate violence,” Palin wrote back. “I hate war. Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence.”

Boy that almost makes Palin sound reasonable.

No wonder she was pissed.

Remembering the Anchorage brawl. Has it been a year already?

Wow is it September the 6th already?

It feels like just yesterday when we first started hearing about the Throwdown at the Hoedown.

Remember when we were first trying to piece everything together, and getting only minimal help from the Anchorage police?

Witnesses were talking, but some were afraid of backlash for going public. And that was not paranoia on their part either.

Of course the Palins tried to get their version out to do a little damage control.

But ultimately our constant pressure caused the APD to finally cave in and release the full report (With both pictures and audio!) after over a month of badgering.

Of course the Palins responded to this by playing their favorite card. The victim card.

However the damage had already been done.

All in all it was perhaps one of my favorite episodes since I started to report on these Wasillabillies.

Hey, you know Kory Klingenmeyer is having his birthday again, you don't think we could get lucky enough for lightning (That's what I call Bristol's fists) to strike twice do you?

If you want more of a longer walk down memory lane simply type the word "brawl" into the Search This Blog window and allow the karma to wash over you.

Well it appears that there are other bloggers out there who do not think we should stop pursuing babygate either.

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars:  

Rumors, innuendo and inconclusive photographs do not a true story make, but the fact of the matter is that seven years after the birth of Trig Paxson Van Palin, there is no proof that right-wing sweetheart Sarah Palin is his biological mother and evidence he may be her grandson. 

If you believe that I - or anyone else - has no business pursuing the question of whether John McCain's 2008 running mate put over an enormous hoax on the American public because the whole idea is so . . . well, yucky, then you need read no further. Besides which, a kid with disabilities having a home with a family that has plenty of dough is enough for many people who are averse to questioning Palin's serial evasions. 

But if you, like me, remain curious about the evasions concerning her alleged pregnancy and Trig's birth, as well as her unwillingness to provide any proof to tamp down rumors that she faked the birth of the Down syndrome child, then stick around. Palin still will not even release a copy of Trig's birth certificate although she hectored Barack Obama to release his. 

This story deserves to have legs because the former half-term Alaska governor turned author and reality show princess and most recently Tea Party carnival sideshow freak not only has not gone away. 

She continues to inject herself into national politics, having campaigned early on for the 2012 Republican president nomination until even she realized that her brand was tarnished despite a small but hard-core conservative constituency that continues to cling to her every statement as if they were Biblical missives.

Gee all of that sounds awfully familiar to all of us here on IM. Nice to hear it said someplace else though, isn't it?

C and L then links to a post over at Kiko's House, updated from 2011, which does an admirable job of laying out Palin's birth story, as well as all of the reasons that it does not hold water.

The author, Shaun Mullins, also quotes from Geoffrey Dunn, Joe McGinniss, and Andrew Sullivan as well.

There are also a few quotes from Professor Scharlott, mostly a refutation of the two Trig's theory that many of you may remember he did not exactly agree with me on. (Actually I think I proved my point with this post, but let's not open old wounds.)

Interestingly enough the updated post was put up on Saturday, which was the same day that I wrote this post wondering out loud if anybody cared about the story anymore.

I have no evidence that Mullins was responding directly to my post, but it does answer the central question.

Apparently yes, it certainly DOES matter to quite a number of people.

Well, I guess it's time to roll up my sleeves again and get to work.

Happy 7th Birthday Trig Paxson Van Palin!

Most recent picture I could find courtesy of Bristol's Enjoygram account.

Seriously is there ANY seven year old on the planet whose birth, and the pregnancy leading up to his birth, has attracted as much scrutiny as Trig's?

I seriously doubt it.

And there are some who argue that after all this time, in the words of Hillary Clinton, "What difference at this point does it make?"

And that is actually a good question.

Personally I think that we here at IM have done a pretty admirable job of proving, beyond what I think is a reasonable doubt, that Sarah did not give birth to Trig on April 18th, 2008.

Some of that proof can be found here, here, and here.

I have just one more lead that I am chasing right now, and it is a humdinger. But to be honest it will still proof insufficient to convince those who simply refuse to entertain the possibility that ANYBODY, Sarah Palin included, would ever attempt to pull off such an audacious hoax.

And once again there are those who wonder does anybody really even care anymore?

So I put it to you my friends, do you think it is still worth the effort?

And if I do manage to gather a few last pieces to the puzzled which proves that she faked the pregnancy, what then?

Feel free to speak your mind. After all this is the place for it.

More Palin family secrets from one who once helped to keep them.

"Okay seriously who is talking to him?"

To start off with I actually sent my source a list of some of the questions that all of you had left in the comments section here at IM.

I did not send everything as that might prove a little overwhelming, but I did send the ones that were suggested the most and that I thought she might know something about.

Here they are as I sent them, with her responses which came first in written form and then were fleshed out over the phone:

1) Do you know whether Sarah has a college diploma?

To this my source answered that she has always been told that Palin had received a degree in journalism but never saw any proof to support that claim. 

2) Have you ever heard the family talk about whether or not Todd is Track's biological father?

To this she answered that she had never heard anything about Todd not being Track's father, though she did know that they got married because Palin was already pregnant.

Such a good Christian girl.

3) Is Trig well cared for? And if so, by whom? (This one really concerns the teachers, therapists, and just everyday parents that come to my site.)

To this my source said that Trig does not, as far as she knows, receive any outside therapeutic treatment but that the nanny who cares for him is trained in something but she does not know what that something is. However she believes that this person is the source for any kind of "therapy" that Trig might receive.

(The nanny is the same person that also cared for Willow and Piper. I have her name but I am not going to share it here, because she deserves her privacy.)

Apparently Trig's main caregivers, besides the nanny, are Todd, Molly Sally, and Bristol.

My source also said that Palin herself spends very little time with Trig, and that he often hits her or acts out in anger, and she is incapable of handling him.

4) How close is Sarah to her extended family. (I think this refers to mostly Todd's family, which you and I have already discussed.)

To this she responded that Sarah is not at all close to most of Todd's side of the family, though she will be fake nice to them during the holidays.

I think this is a good place to explain a comment I left on another post where I suggested that the reason there were no family Christmas pictures on Palin's Facebook page was because they had celebrated Christmas at Todd's sister's house. Which is where Track used to live in Palmer apparently.

That led me to ask who the sister was and exactly how many siblings Todd has, because I was never clear on that.  They are in order of birth Kristy, Todd, JD, and of course Diana.

I also learned that virtually all of them have struggled with substance abuse, serious substance abuse, and that it is a family trait. So apparently Track and Bristol come by it honestly.

5) Does anybody in the family, besides Sarah, actually have a job outside or working for the Mama Grizzly? (There is a persistent story of Bristol working for a dermatologist, but she has taken so many extended leaves of absence that it does not seem like it is a real job.)

My source tells me that lat she heard Willow was working at a hair salon, Track is always unemployed (And back living at home now.), and Bristol has a weird arrangement with a Dr. Cusack in Anchorage at the Alaska Dermatology Laser and Skin Care Center.

According to my source Bristol really has no set hours, and only goes to the office occasionally when it suits her.

Her job is apparently just filing and answering the phones. She does no actual skin care even though she recently graduated from "skin school."

I asked my source why this guy would keep Bristol on the payroll through all of her reality show appearances and DWTS episodes. Her answer was that Cusack is "enraptured with Sarah."

That's kind of what I figured.

6) Do you know anything about Sarah's fling with Brad Hanson?

To this my source answered that all she knew was what everybody else knew, and had never heard anything said about it within the family.

However she did add that Sarah, and I quote, "got around in high school."

 7)  Does Sarah wear a wig or have hair extensions due to hair loss. (I joke about this all of the time, but if you know for certain that would very interesting.)

To this my source said that Palin has hair clips that she adds to give her hair more volume, and sometimes simply wears wig, but does not think that she is actually losing her hair.

She did add that it would not surprise her to learn that Sarah was losing her hair, due to her long term eating disorders.

8) And finally you said that you do not believe that Palin gave birth to Trig, why is that?

To this my source responded that there was a lot of secrecy around the pregnancy, and of course nobody knew about it in the family until the very end. (She also agreed that it would be virtually impossible to hide the pregnancy from Willow and Bristol for that long.)

She also said there was no baby shower which was weird because there had been one with all of the other kids. and that there was no time when anybody was allowed to touch Sarah's belly or felt the baby kick.

She mentioned that Palin was kind of MIA at the time and either out of town, or if home staying in her room and not talking to visitors. Therefore she did not see Palin very often around that time, and when she did see her she was dressed up with scarfs and a vest or jacket that hid her belly all of the time.

At this point I asked my source if she had a theory as to Trig's parentage and she said that she thinks it is very possible that Trig is Todd's child from another woman. Which if you think about it makes quite a lot of sense, and would explain Palin's strained relationship with the child.

(My source is confident she can ascertain more about this, but she has to proceed cautiously.)

During a follow up phone conversation I also learned a few other interesting tidbits:

• Before the brawl started that day in Anchorage Track was high as a kite and kept trying to start a fight with Todd, before he found another target for his aggression.
• Sarah really was a dedicated runner at one time and actually did run all of the time for exercise.
• Speaking of running, Sarah was also at one time seriously contemplating a run for John McCain's Senate seat. My source is not sure what derailed those plans, but of course it never happened. 
• This is not exactly news but the source also says that not only is Trig a prop, but that Sarah treats all of the kids as props or to shield herself from controversy. Like I said we know that but it is still interesting to hear from an eyewitness. 
• Told me that Blanche Kalstrom, Todd's mom, blamed one of Sarah's miscarriages to flying on a small plane and told her to never fly pregnant again. (I thought this was very interesting in light of the Wild Ride story.) 

There are still things that I cannot share due to my source's determination to remain anonymous for the time being, however she assures me that she is serious about coming out of the shadows sometime soon. All she is waiting for is a few legal loose ends to be tied up.

Until then I am continuing to talk with her and she is more than willing to answer questions, so if any of you have more ideas please let me know.

P.S. Photos and documents will be presented at some time in the future as well. Many of them never before seen.

Tomorrow.

At 6:15 Alaska time.

10:15 Eastern time.

See you then.

Sarah Palin lets Greta Van Susteren do her talking for her on Obama's Cuba decision, and the second season of Amazing America attracts a smattering of coverage. Not all of it good.

I don't think that Palin really has any idea what the President's decision to normalize relations with Cuba ultimately means for conservative politics. So until her handlers tell her what to say she is staying relatively quiet on the issue.

However that does not mean she cannot link to her pal Greta Van Susteren who seems perturbed that the President worked to release Alan Gross, who has been imprisoned in Cuba since 2009, and not Andrew Tahmooressi who had been in a Mexico jail for about seven months.

This is from Van Susteren's Facebook page:

I'm very happy ‪#‎AlanGross‬ is home, but still absolutely mystified as to why President Barack Obama wouldn't help our ‪#‎MarineHeldInMexico‬. Watch my "Off the Record" commentary and tell me if you are likewise stumped about the president's lack of involvement in freeing Sgt. Andrew ‪#‎Tahmooressi‬.

Here let me help.

The reason that the President was more hands on with getting Alan Gross out of prison than the conservative's pet border jumping Marine might be because Gross was arrested for smuggling satellite phones and computer components to a Cuban Jewish organization, and Tahmooressi was caught crossing the border with illegal firearms and then repeatedly lied to the Mexican police.

Just a hunch.

As for Palin's second season working the green screen, there is really not a whole lot of buzz thus far.

The Washington Times covered it, barely.

As did Mediaite.

Alaska Dispatch did a little better. (Also revealing Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner's struggle with alcohol and drugs.)

And even Breitbart could only bring themselves to contribute about six paragraphs to the show.

They also used this picture.

Which I think indicates where THEIR interest lies.

What I found more informative were the comments found on some of these media outlets.

For instance: 

They'll do okay until they get in their first fight about what to shoot from the helicopter wolves or pigs, and the whole Palin klan blindsides and jumps Nugent in a drunken orgy of violence. 

You know, a typical Palin family outing. 

And: 

Wow, Nugent and Palin on the same show - between them they might get to double digits in the IQ department. 

As well as: 

...and the caricature of a human is now complete. It seems appropriate that she's standing on the side of a road looking for the best offer to come along, much like she spent her time in the Governor's office. What a waste of skin.

Not that is a hell of a lot more entertaining than anything to be found in this crappy show of hers.

Speaking of entertainment I thought you guys would like to know that my source was beyond thrilled with the response to my post on Monday and is excited to share more.

I will be trying to get together with her this weekend, or early next week.

Before then I thought it might be fun to ask all of you if there are any questions that you would like her to clear up, that perhaps I have not already thought of myself. And before you say it I have already discussed with her the babygate thing and we are working on that.

A Follow Up.

So yesterday was fun wasn't it?

Over 700 comments?  Not bad.

Of course a ton of those were written by various trolls trying desperately to suggest that either there was no new information, if there was new information it was never going to have an impact, and, my favorite, we don't know them anyway. ("They're living vibrantly dammit!")

The other criticism, which is nothing new, is that it was not the "smoking gun," the "iceberg," or was not going to "take her down." 

To that I would say, she has already been "taken down." There is really not much further for her to fall.

In fact if you are looking for the incident that really damaged her brand for good, you need look no further than the drunken brawl. Which STILL gets mentioned in all kinds of places on the internet these days, and which inspired people once quite close to her to finally speak out.

So yes there is probably never going to be that one big post that essentially sends her crawling back under a rock. However the steady drip, drip, drip, of new information from new sources, is cumulatively achieving that very goal.

A couple of things to clear up.

Yes there is much more coming from this source. (And others who are currently waiting in the wings.)

Yes what I wrote was based on first hand, eye witness accounts.

Yes my source is well aware that the Palins may come after her, and simply does not care.

And yes she is looking for a book deal if possible, or to tell her story to magazines if the former is off the table.

The desire of my source is to get everything she has seen, or been told, out to the public.

I do not at this time know when the next big post will come. As I said there are things outside of my control which are setting the agenda.

But it, and many others, will come. And hopefully there will be a book, and or magazine articles as well.

Finally if indeed there were some of you who finished the post yesterday somewhat unimpressed that it fine. I can't please everybody.  However I assure you that there was at least one visitor living near a dead lake who read through it with clenched teeth and an overwhelming sense of dread.