Pastor Palin preaches forgiveness while also smearing the name of the now deceased Joe McGinniss.

I forgive nothing!

Courtesy of the Church of Palinology: 

There was a season in the Palin world when a strange author moved in right next door. He was a pretty famous guy in the book world, so people paid attention when he announced he’d moved all the way form (sic) New York to write a book about us. This wasn’t a shining season. Todd had to build a huge fence to separate the guy from practically being able to touch the kids when they played in the yard. (Once again Palin is insinuating that Joe was a pedophile. He was not, and her constant attempts to label him as such even after his death are indefensible.) It worked. Todd’s fence was more effective than our country’s nonexistent one along the border. But then the new neighbor resorted to standing high on his porch with binoculars to see what he could see.

(Also false, he was looking the other direction at the birds on the lake. Palin's house is behind him in this picture. Which THEY took of him by the way.) Thank God it only lasted a year and a half; then I could finally open my west-facing curtains again. His mission to “keep an eye on us” was complete for his hit-job book. (For the record I spent quite some time at Joe's house in Wasilla and the rules were that we could not look out his window and ogle the Palin property, invade their privacy in any way, or take any pictures.)

He was out for himself. (Actually he was out to tell the truth. Which he did.)

Everyone seems basically out for themselves. In my line of work I see it every day. If you don’t agree with someone’s view, they often pull out all the stops to condemn you. (Eek! Hypocrisy overload!) It’s brutal! I know it’s hard to understand the concept of forgiving someone who doesn’t want it, because they’d just as soon double up their efforts to insult. 

I admit it: sometimes, my first reaction is retaliation. (Gee, really?) But we’re told to forgive. Even further, the Bible says to help our enemies! God tells us that vengeance is His, not ours. We need to lave (sic) that to God, because He is the true and final judge.

So to sum up we should all be more forgiving of everybody unless it's an author who wrote a book about us. Then we can just lie about this and continue to assassinate heir character. Is that right?

Personally I think Joe McGinniss did this country a great service by exposing this lunatic, and for that I count him as an American hero.

Former reporter and current blogger, Julia O'Malley wants people to think that Sarah Palin was not always this way. (Spoiler alert: Yes she was.)

Here is a portion of O'Malley's revisionist history courtesy of The Guardian:  

There was a time when Sarah Palin was normal by Alaska standards. Way back before the hoopla, and way before she endorsed Donald Trump, she made sense as a politician here. That’s not the case any more. 

I’m told she lives in Alaska most of the time, but she’s invisible in public life. But back in the day, I liked her – and so did many in my community. I’m not conservative, but she grew on me when I worked as a reporter in Anchorage in the mid-2000s, and the reason had nothing to do with politics. She was a kind of regular person I recognized as of this place. Tough, funny, pragmatic. She loved Alaska like I did. If you didn’t know her then, it’s hard to explain or believe.

O'Malley then offers this picture, which shows Palin just hobnobbing with the locals and which she believes was NOT a photo-op, that there tells you that she does not understand Sarah Palin.

Above all, Palin was nice. If a reporter called her office, she called back on their cell phone: “Hi, this is Sarah.” Like most people here, she was religious, but didn’t talk about it publicly. Like most people, her family hunted and owned guns, but she didn’t talk too much about that either. She was fuzzy on policy details, but only insiders noticed. She made a big deal about government corruption. 

“She wanted to be liked and, as a result, was likable,” said a reporter friend of mine who covered her as governor. “Her only real enemies were white-guy boys club oil politicians who were getting indicted by the feds.”

Okay well there is some truth to this.  Palin absolutely was focused on her polls numbers and receiving positive coverage from media outlets.

So yes she returned calls fairly quickly, IF you were somebody that she perceived to be "on the team."

In fact at one time Dennis Zaki was one of those people, and broke into the news biz to some degree based on his access to Sarah Palin and the number of great photos he took of her and other politicians in Alaska.

However I was there when he lobbed the first criticism her way, and let me tell you the arctic winter has NOTHING on Sarah Palin when it comes to freezing people out.

O'Malley then documents when SHE thinks everything changed for Palin:

I rode along in the motorcade the day she came back to the state to vote. We whizzed out to Wasilla, and she emerged from her black SUV wearing a Carhartt jacket. The outfit was self-conscious. Alaska schtick. Not her thing. But she’d already recalibrated for an audience that wasn’t us. Then John McCain lost. She peaced-out on being governor. 

For many here, that was the end. 

It’s hard to keep track of what happened next. The internet Sarah-ploded. There was Fox News, reality television, the book, the steady stream of social-media snits, the house in Arizona, a family run-in with the cops and Bristol’s baby-mama drama.

You see the problem with this is that O'Malley seems to be basing most of her Palin-ology on her personal experiences with the then Governor who was seeking positive coverage.

It does not seem that O'Malley has done any real research into Palin's past nor that she has read any of the great books written about her including those written by Geoffrey Dunn, Joe McGinniss,  or even Frank Bailey.

Instead she bases it on her memories, which I find somewhat unreliable as O'Malley was also the reporter who swore up and down that she KNEW that Sarah Palin was indeed pregnant with Trig, and that there was no conspiracy: 

But, of course, there was no silence spiral. The journalists, including me, who covered Palin at the time believed she was pregnant because she was pregnant. Even before the announcement, she seemed to be putting on weight. She wore baggy jackets and scarves. Before the announcement, she acted nervous when photographers tried to take her picture. Later on, her face filled out. Her fingers swelled. She had a noticeable belly. And it wasn't made out of foam. 

Palin also ran all the time at the gym in Juneau. People I know saw her on the treadmill sweating in workout clothes. She had a belly. I repeat: she had a real pregnant belly. Are you going to tell me she was wearing a prosthetic abdomen on the treadmill?

For the record Palin has ALWAYS been a conniving opportunist who manipulated the weak willed around her and savaged her critics at every turn.

She used her feminine wiles to seduce male reporters and her girl power BS to win over the female journalists. And that seemed to work well here in Alaska, where let's face it journalism is not exactly breaking new ground.

However all of that came to a halt when a certain Katie Couric asked the innocuous question "What do you read?"

THAT was the beginning of the end, and THAT was when everybody started to see the true Sarah Palin.

Somebody it seems that Julia O'Malley never got the chance to meet.

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!

Alaska cuts loose incredibly expensive natural gas pipeline consultant.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:  

A highly paid attorney who earned more than $850,000 working on Alaska’s proposed gas pipeline project no longer works for the state and is unlikely to return, Gov. Bill Walker said Friday. 

Rigdon Boykin, a commercial attorney, earned up to $120,000 monthly working as a negotiator for the state before his contract with the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. was terminated Nov. 30. 

Boykin was paid $750,000 by the corporation, plus another $100,000 by Walker’s office under a separate contract. 

In an interview Friday morning, Walker said the state had “changed up the team a bit.”

The article goes on to quote Walker's defense of Boykin's work, and his claim that the state "got it's money's worth" out of  Boykin

Bullshit!

The evidence for that, according to Governor Walker, is a commitment from BP and ConocoPhilips that IF a pipeline were constructed they would negotiate sales of the gas. That's like promising to build a stable for my unicorn once I capture it.

Never gonna happen.

I have been hearing about this fabled natural gas pipeline for almost forty years now.

I have also heard that Jesus is coming back.

I assume both of these events will take place on the same day.

Our dearly departed friend Joe McGinnis wrote perhaps the definitive argument for why there will never be a gas pipeline in his article Pipe Dreams:

The first thing I learned about the pipeline was that the reason nobody had built it in 30 years was that nobody could have made any money by doing so. Here’s how it works: You decide to build a pipeline to carry gas from Point A to Point B, and you spend a couple of years scoping out a route and putting together a cost estimate. Then you have what in the gas business is called an open season, when you try to persuade whoever has gas to commit in advance to shipping it through your pipeline for, let’s say, 25 years. Once you’ve signed up your shippers, you go to a bank, and the bank loans you the money you need to build the pipeline. Once you have your financing, you go to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington and ask for a permit. They check your shipping commitments, your financing, and about a zillion other things, and if they like the way things look, they issue the permit. Then you build the line, and the gas starts to flow and keeps flowing for 25 years or more, and everybody makes a ton of money. 

But with natural gas selling for less than $2 per million British thermal units, or MMBtu—which it had been for about 50 years—there was no way to make money building a $40 billion pipeline to carry it all the way from the North Slope of the Brooks Range in Alaska to Chicago, or Green Bay, Wisconsin, or Burnt Chitlin, Louisiana. Only in the past 10 years did the price climb above $3 per MMBtu, the lowest possible number at which an Alaskan pipeline might be feasible, according to experts in the natural-gas sector. (After spiking to more than $12 last summer, by February gas was down to about $4.75.)

Currently natural gas prices are at around 2.8 and the market is essentially saturated, which means there is NO demand for more natural gas pipelines.

That is just a lie they tell to the Alaskan men, much like "Yes I think back hair DOES make you look sexy."

Well I for one am tired of hearing this particular line of bullshit, and now that I hear how much this Boykin guy earned from sitting on his ass thinking up reasons to get paid, I am even MORE tired of it.

The Washington Post agrees with Bristol Palin's ghostwritten blogpost. Nancy French is very excited.

Okay so this Washington Post reporter (Not a very good reporter since she fails to recognize that Bristol Palin does not write her own blog.) posted an article that kind of agrees with Brancy's post from August 10th, in defense of Donald Trump.

In the article the reporter suggests that faux outrage never works and that Brancy's post was calling Erick Erickson out over using it: 

Whether or not we agree about the validity of the question, Bristol Palin’s got a point. This is not a winning strategy, and if you don’t grasp why, it’s because you misunderstand the whole reason the “outrage industry” works. 

One of the things I’ve been most struck by, whenever I find myself in rooms of people who all share the same beliefs (on whatever side of the aisle) is how ready they are to assume that the people who do not share those beliefs are being disingenuous. That beliefs you disagree with are somehow less genuine than those you share because No Intelligent Person Could Truly Believe Such A Thing or because They’re Just Claiming That They’re Offended To Shut Us Up — as though there were some big red Outrage Button that could be pressed, on cue, to achieve a desired political result. 

That would be too easy. 

And when you don’t assume sincerity on the part of your opponent, you wind up with fauxtrage.

This of course sent a thrill up the leg of Nancy French:

Well, this rarely happens. Thanks, Alexandra!

But here's the thing that this Washington Post reporter seems to have missed.

Fake outrage was EXACTLY what Nancy French was whipping up with her column.

She was attacking Erick Erickson's refusal to allow Donald Trump to attend his event, by bringing up sexist things that he himself had said in the past.  Including one incredibly overblown incident pertaining to Sarah's fake cleavage.

So not only did this reporter not realize that Bristol did not write a word of the blog post, but in her zeal to agree with a Palin she failed to realize she was congratulating Bristol for engaging in the exact same thing that she was condemning others for doing.

If she had taken even five minutes to do a little research she would have found that the Palins have made a cottage industry out of "fauxtrage" as she calls it.

From calling David Letterman a pervert for making a joke about her daughter, to suggesting that Joe McGinniss moved in next door to see in to Piper's bedroom, to taking every question about Trig Palin's bizarre birth story and framing it as an attack on a child with Down syndrome, Palin has refined this practice down to a fine art.

So once again ANOTHER ill informed reporter buys into the Palin mythology, and provides them with unearned credibility.

Well great now I feel outrage. And not "fauxtrage" either.

So what do YOU think I should do with it?

I mean I have some ideas but I'm not sure how many of them are viable or even worth my time.

Oh wait, some of you might be a little lost.

Go below the fold if you are confused.

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.

Sarah Palin wishes the country a happy Veterans Day while pimping something called "The Sportsman Channel." Now why does that sound vaguely familiar?

Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue Vajazzled one's Facebook page:  

Happy Veterans Day! Enjoy this short video honoring the sacrifices of America's finest. 

We're gearing up to show the country a new season of "Amazing America" on the Sportsman Channel, so be prepared to get your Red, Wild & Blue on! - Sarah Palin

Wait, the Sportsman Channel is still a thing? Hell I almost forgot mocking the channel nobody watched before she gave us the "Sarah Palin Channel" to mock.

Well it will be nice to have it back now that the Sarah Palin Channel is all covered with a thin layer of dust and cobwebs from lack of use.

I also could not help but notice that in the video Palin makes sure to push that combat veteran mythology:

"You know you can see his spine stiffen, and you can see him stand a little taller when he gets that little bit of recognition for what it is that he has CHOSEN to do. He has volunteered to, in some respects, put the rest of his life on hold in order to fulfill a duty to protect America."

Yeah, nice story lady, but that is not the way that Joe McGinniss reported Track's enlistment in his book "The Rogue:" (Pg 113-114)

"Track was in pretty big trouble,” a friend of his tells me. “The school bus thing, theft issues, drugs, multiple stuff. Sarah was governor by then, and Track posed too much risk in terms of PR. So she and Todd sat him down and told him he was going to enlist. They said, ‘You’re gonna do this because you owe us. This is gonna look good for us and you’re gonna do it.'” 

Sarah made it look even better by arranging the enlistment for September 11, the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. On September 11, 2008, Track was deployed to Iraq, allowing Sarah to proclaim forever after that she was the proud mother of a combat vet. Some might see this as classic example of taking the lemon that life gives you and using it to make lemonade. 

I talk to the state trooper who drove Sarah and Track to the enlistment office in Anchorage on September 11, 2007. “There was quite a bit of emotion in the back seat of that car,” he tells me, “but patriotism was not one of the emotions."

Yeah that certainly fits better with what people in Wasilla say about Track, and might help to explain why a little alcohol turns him into a drunken thug willing to take on all comers only to have his ass kicked in public. (You know once he gets that nice shirt of first of course.)

Nice try Sarah, but it would be nice if you could take a day off from shoveling the family mooseshit, on the day that we are supposed to be honoring out fighting men and women.

Have some class.

A little update on what I am working on.

"Uh oh."

So as I mentioned a while back I have been in contact with a source who has been providing me with fascinating information recently. Some of it simply reinforcing what we already know, and some of it quite new, and a little startling.

Before I start sharing, the first thing to get out of the way is all of this iceberg talk.

The term "iceberg" was coined by my friend Dennis Zaki, and at the time he felt that what was about to be revealed qualified as an iceberg that would literally sink Palin's political career.

As all of you know instead she resigned and the iceberg simply melted away. Much to our frustration.

I would not characterize what I am working on as an iceberg, mostly because Palin's political career already sank into the icy depths, and because there is not yet any way to determine what kind of impact this will have on what remains of her, for lack of a better word, "career."

The second thing I want to remind all of you about is that protecting my sources is job one in my eyes. So no matter how often commenters badger me to hurry up or risk losing my credibility, or suggest that I don't deliver on my promises, or simply mock me as if we are on an elementary school playground, none of that will make things happen any faster. 

As for my credibility remember that even though I was reporting interesting behind the scenes information about  Schaeffer Cox, I did not divulge that I was getting that from Bill "Drop Zone" Fulton until the FBI allowed him to come out of the shadows.

Even though he helped to shape our understanding on this blog about Palin's secretive nature, and revealed that Palin was not met by her security detail when she arrived back from Texas that April night in 2008, nobody knew that I had been talking to her security chief Gary Wheeler until Joe used his name in "The Rogue."

And that is going to be true in this case as well.

Which means that what I can share has to be weighed against what it reveals about the source. If it is something that only a handful of people could know, then it can only come out when the source themselves decides that they want to as well.

That could very well be what happens here. But it is still in the negotiation phase.

So what I can reveal at this point is that I have finally had a face to face meeting. That the person is very credible, and that there is documentation to back up their story.

What has been shared is quite a lot about the Palin's parenting styles (Spoiler alert: It's really terrible.), Palin's struggles as mayor, fighting within the family, and Todd's philandering. (It is worse than you think.)

There is more (Oh boy is there!), but that has to be kept on the down low for right now.

If you are not patient and want to run away and never visit this blog again, please feel free to do so and you really don't need to tell us about it in the comments.

If you are a troll who thinks that proclaiming I am liar, or a tease, or that I never follow through with revelations, then know that it will really have no significant impact. (However it's a free country so bash away if you must.)

Keep in mind though that Beldar has appropriated your job as IM's resident troll and has moved trolling to new heights that I seriously doubt that the majority of you are intellectually suited to attain.

Now I cannot provide a timetable as to when things are going to break because that is not the way things work. As I am sure most of you realize.

If you want to know my opinion on what I am hearing I will tell you this, when it gets posted it is going to make troll heads explode all over the damn place.

Oh yeah, all over the damn place. 

I cannot think of anybody more deserving to hear about Sarah Palin's recent scandals than our dear friend Joe McGinniss. Sadly he is not here to do so.

Earlier today somebody sent me this link to a 2011 interview with Joe and I thought it was well worth sharing today. Especially since Joe discusses in great detail the fear that the Palins instill in the people of Alaska.

Joe also goes into great depth about his research concerning babygate, and lays out all of the reasons why her stories about her pregnancy and the birth simply do not make any sense.

By the way Gary Wheeler, who Joe mentions in the radio interview, was one of the people that I was able to hook him up while he was up here.

Gary was the one who told me that Palin did NOT get picked up the night that Trig was supposedly born, because if the security detail had done so they would have insisted that she stop at a local hospital and not continue the drive to Wasilla.

He also told me that it was highly unusual for her NOT to notify security that she was arriving back in Anchorage by plane. And has no explanation for why she didn't.

The interview is quite good, and it is always great hearing Joe airing all of Palin's dirty laundry out in public.

I can only imagine how much Joe would have enjoyed this last week.

And how pleased he would be concerning what's about to come.

Recently discovered interview with the late great Joe McGinniss describing his adventures researching and writing "The Rogue."

This is a great,. and very informative, interview with Joe on the day his book was first released.

Pay special attention to how Joe describes how terrified people were, and still remain, of Sarah Palin in Wasilla.

And then keep that in mind as you consider how hard it has been to get people to talk on record, or to reveal too much of what they know about Sarah.

At the 28:00 mark Joe even relays to the interviewer the fact that Bristol's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, threatened Mercede that if she spoke to Joe she would keep Tripp away from Levi and his family. (He used the same threat to keep her from talking to me by the way.)

If you hag in there at the 32:06 mark you get to hear Joe say that he does not know if Sarah and Todd are Trig's parents.

All I can say after watching this is how much I miss Joe.

He could be an abrasive person at times to be sure, but damn was it fun to collaborate with him.

We remained in contact after the book came out, even after all of that hullabaloo about Frank Bailey's book, and I miss seeing an email of his show up in my inbox with the header "Did you see this?"

Those always proved to be interesting and informative, just like the man who sent them.

Andrew Sullivan on the passing of Joe McGinniss.

Courtesy of The Dish:  

Of course, we bonded over the former half-term governor. He reached out to me when I was wildly exposed among journalists for refusing to believe her stories at face value. And what we bonded over was not a mutual revulsion at her politics. What we bonded over was the abject failure of the American press to say what had to be said about this preposterous, delusional maniac plucked from deserved obscurity by John McCain to be a heartbeat away from a potential presidency. 

Her candidacy was a total farce; a disgrace; an outrage to American democracy; an appalling act of cynicism. Joe saw the creation of this media figure as a continuation of the Ailes recipe for optic politics, and he was appalled as so many mainstream outlets nonetheless insisted on taking this joke seriously. 

So he went to do what others wouldn’t: to find the real truth about Palin, and he came closer than almost anyone. 

I don’t see his last book as some kind of aberration, though it was obviously not in the same league as The Selling Of The President or Fatal Vision. I saw them all as a continuing crusade for a journalism that takes a stand, that welcomes obloquy if that’s what it takes to get to the truth, and that cares about our democracy. He would never have aimed for the “view from nowhere” or the facile mantra that one leading Washington journalist gave me when asked to explain why they hadn’t sought any proof for the fantastic Trig story that Palin spun: “Why ask questions when you know you won’t get an answer?” For Joe that was pathetic. As indeed it was.

There were a number of things that surprised me about Joe McGinniss.

His incredible love of Alaska, his love of strong drink, his tenacity, and his ability to befriend all manner of different people.

He was good friends, and I mean really good friends, with people from all walks of life.

At a party I attended in his rented house on Lake Lucille I discussed politics with an oil company spokesman, a mountain guide, an out of town journalist, and a few fellow Alaskans who had met and befriended Joe when he wrote "Going to Extremes."

Yet the friendships that he shared with Roger Ailes and Andrew Sullivan were perhaps the two which really demonstrated his capacity to welcome into his life people of quite extreme differences.

Ailes of course did not like Sarah Palin at all, something which I learned well before the public at large (Though Joe swore me to secrecy.), and only used her to attract viewers and to rake in advertising dollars.

Sullivan, as all of you well know, was the last real journalist standing on the hunt for the truth about Trig's birth.

Joe once told me that he had been hesitant about even approaching that subject, since he knew it would open the book to ridicule, but that he had been very impressed with the reporting by Andrew and myself, and came to realize that he could not write a book about Palin without addressing it.

He would never openly admit that he knew that she lied about the circumstances of the birth, but in conversations and e-mails it was pretty clear that he did not buy her story one little bit.

Sullivan also shared this e-mail that McGinniss sent him: 

My shrink asked me this afternoon if I thought my book was a factor in Palin’s decision not to run. I said, “It might have been. It certainly didn’t tip her toward running. She may well have seen what one lone reporter turned up in four months and realized what teams from MSM outlets might learn in twelve, as they would have done over the next year, if she’d run.” 

She said, “In that case, the people of the United States will be eternally in your debt.”

In that I am in total agreement.

Thank you Joe we owe you so very much.

P.S. For those who want to go on a trip down memory lane, here is a reminder of the e-mail exchange between Joe and I that the Right Wing tried to use to sabotage sales of "The Rogue."

Joe McGinniss has died.

I'm sorry to report that Joe McGinniss passed away earlier today.

This from ABC News:  

McGinniss, who announced in 2013 that he had been diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer, died from complications related to his disease. His attorney and longtime friend Dennis Holahan said he died at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Mass.

Brilliant and opinionated, Joe did not suffer fools lightly but if he called you a friend you were his friend forever. And that even included Roger Ailes, despite their diametrically opposing views on politics.

Joe McGinniss was a very good friend, and frequent source whose information inspired some of my best posts.

I will miss him.

Sarah Palin a female Bill Clinton? Yeah, she wishes!

You know every once in awhile there is a story, or video, or something that arrives in the comments section or my email inbox so often that is becomes almost impossible to ignore.

Such is the case with a commentary from Capitol Hill Blue:  

Interesting that one of the most vocal and often-quoted supporters of controversial “Duck Dynasty” reality show star Phil Robertson is another figment of celebrity-fantasy — failed Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the one-time sex symbol of the rabid right. 

In politics, where hypocrisy abounds, Palin is a standout when it comes to being everything she rants and raves against. The self-styled defender of family values is a female Bill Clinton: Someone who sleeps around. While dating future husband Todd Palin, the then-Sarah Heath, a sports reporter for an Alaska TV station, reportedly shacked up for a night in a dorm room with a college basketball star in what those close to her say was just one of a string of casual flings by a sexually-adventurous woman. 

In college, Palin was known as a wild child who attended five schools in six years. A favorite photo of her from her college days showed a young woman on a bed in a college dorm room wearing a t-shirt that said: “I may be flat broke but I’m not flat busted.” After marriage, she embarked on a six-month affair with Palin’s partner in a snowmobile business and news of his wife’s amorous activities led an angry husband to dissolve the partnership. Those closest to Palin say that while the one-time vice presidential candidate who became a political joke likes to spend time in bed with a variety of men, those who sample her favors is apparently not husband Todd. The Palins, they say, have slept in separate bedrooms for years now. 

After her aborted run for vice president with running mate John McCain, whose advisers picked her because they wanted “a celebrity” on the ticket, Palin ended up on Fox News, where channel executives admitted selecting her because “she’s hot.” They weren’t talking about her political appeal. Author Joe McGinnis, whose string of best selling books about politics and politicians have led to more than one downfall of those who claimed to be what they are not, documented Palin’s fling with basketball star Glen Rice while she was dating her future husband as well as her six-month dalliance with Todd’s business partner Brad Hanson after they married. Although Sarah and Todd talked about having a traditional wedding, they eloped and their son was born less than nine months later, suggesting the purveyor of family values was practicing acts that produce families before marriage. McGinnis also discusses use of cocaine by the Palins. Palin denies the drug use, along with reports of her rampant sexual adventures. 

The article goes on to quote from Joe's blog and point out that while Palin threatened to sue him nothing ever came of it.  And of course we know that nothing ever came of those threats because what Joe had printed was true, and that's what a court case would prove.

And as for the Clinton comparison that really does not stand up to scrutiny.

Sure Bill has trouble controlling the little brain that lives in his pants, but he is not a politician who made his career trying to create a picture perfect image of himself as an icon of morality only to be a raging hypocrite.

Oh, and there is the fact that Clinton was actually a GOOD politician as well.

No there is no reasonable comparison between Palin and Bill Clinton.

As for the fact that she is a hypocritical POS? Well that is undeniable. 

Remembering Thanksgiving weekends of the past. Such as the Great Alaska Shootout Thanksgiving weekend of 1987.

Hey let's take a trip in our time machines, or actually Joe's book "The Rogue,"to remember a simpler time, a time of good basketball, good food, and good sex?

Courtesy of Deadspin:  

After her graduation, Sarah returned to Alaska and worked on the sports desk of Anchorage television station KTUU. On weekends, she'd sometimes appear on camera, delivering sports reports during the 10:00 PM newscast. 

Her attitude toward people of color was evolving. In Anchorage, she even dated black men. A friend says, "Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while." 

Each year, over Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Alaska hosted a basketball tournament called the Great Alaska Shootout, featuring some of the country's best teams. In 1987, one of the top squads to visit Anchorage was the University of Michigan, led by six-foot-eight junior Glen Rice, number 41. 

Rice would lead Michigan to the NCAA Championship in 1989, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and setting a scoring record for the NCAA tournament that stands today. After graduating from Michigan as the school's all-time leading scorer, he starred in the NBA for fifteen years. 

Whether in her professional capacity as a sports reporter or simply as a basketball groupie who'd begun to find black men attractive, Sarah linked up with the Rice during the weekend tournament. One friend recalls, "They went out. I suspect it was more than that. I can't say I know they had sex, but I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star." 

In one version of the story, Sarah's encounter with Rice took place in her sister Molly's dorm room at the University of Alaska Anchorage. "She hauled his ass down," a friend says, "but she freaked out afterward. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I fucked a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe she'd done it." 

Glen Rice remembers the weekend quite differently. When I spoke to him by telephone in March 2011, he said, "I remember it as if it was yesterday. She was a sweetheart. I met her almost as soon as we got out there." 

Rice does not recall being in a university dorm room. "We hung out mostly at the hotel where the team was staying," he told me. "We just hit off. In a short time, we got to know a lot about one another. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried." 

"So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?" I asked. 

"No, no, no, nothing like that," Rice said. "Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone. I think right up until the time she got married. She was a gorgeous woman. Super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterward, she was a big crush that I had. I talked about her for a long time. Only good things. She was a well-rounded young lady. It's amazing the way that's stayed with me. I think the utmost of her and I felt that way from the start."

Well so much for the old adage, "Once you go black, you never go back."

However I wonder how many white women who had a fling with a black man then became an out right racist?

Was she simply angry that Rice was not as profoundly affected by their fling as she was, or was her racism already in place ("I fucked a black man!") and she was simply freaked out by the fact that she had slipped, and immediately ran back into the arms of the racially mixed, but totally passing for white, Todd Palin?

Whatever the case it seems that her love/hate relationship with African American men has endured to this day.

"Move Joe I just want to touch him." "No bitch back away before I call the Secret Service."

Happy Thanksgiving weekend Sarah! I know it will never compare to certain Thanksgiving weekends from the past, but hey how many times can a woman get her turkey stuffed by a 6 foot 8 basketball star anyway?

In attempt to slam media for not being outraged sooner over the Martin Bashir comments, Greta brings up Andrew Sullivan's questions about Trig. Uh oh!

Here was the actual headline from Gretawire:

Here is a question: was “MSM” outraged when Andrew Sullivan, member of the media, said Trig Palin was not the Governor’s child?

Oh yes, she did just open Pandora's box, and that box is just chick full of things that Sarah Palin SHOULD by all rights want to be locked up forever.

Here is the rest of the post:

I just spotted this tweet…and yes, I have read the recent outrage…but what took so long? How about Andrew Sullivan’s comments? how come the media silence for him? And that was not someone shaming himself with crude language but picking on a special needs child! or how about the thing David Letterman said about the Palin’s daughter when she was about 14? Any outrage? From MSM or women’s organizations or women role models? 

It is one thing to have substantive and ideological differences, but this Bashir level (the gutter) thing really isn’t that new. So what took the media so long? 

 Gee what was it that Andrew wrote way back when?

It seems to me we have two options. It’s possible that Palin simply made up her drama of labor, or exaggerated it for effect, when in fact it was a routine, if rare, pregnancy, and she had mild warnings that the birth may be premature, and she gussied that up into a tall tale of her pioneer spirit, guided by her doctor, who refused to take the NYT’s calls as soon as Palin hit the big time. I think that’s the likeliest explanation, given the sheer world-historical weirdness of the alternative. 

But it’s also possible that she never had that baby at all. I mean, if you read the emails and independent reports above and were asked if this woman were in labor with a special needs child, and that her water had already broken, would you believe it? Just put all the facts in front of you and ask yourself that question. 

So she is either a self-serving drama queen who didn’t realize her story would imply she put her child – and many others on the planes – at great risk and then winged it to make her story more plausible; or she is a fantastic hoaxer and liar at a world class meshugana level that, at some point, will make Weinergate look like a damp squib. 

To my mind, either option makes her unfit for high office, which is all you need to know really. And the fact that she has never been asked about this by any MSM journalist tells you so so much about what motivates the DC press corps. It’s certainly not curiosity. 

I must really thank Greta for allowing us this trip back through Trig Truther memory lane, I almost forgot how much fun calling Palin out on this obvious deception can be.

And if I may blow my own horn a little, I think that almost immediately following that post by Andrew Sullivan, that I offered the two most compelling posts (One from the same day June 2011 and the other from August of 2011) for the argument that Palin did NOT in fact give birth to Trig Palin. (And of course this one did not hurt at all either.)

Ultimately I believe that we, as a community, have  proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that Palin did not in fact give birth to Trig Paxson Van Palin on April 18th. In fact I remain convinced that if Sarah Palin ever grew the backbone to take me to court over my assertion that she is a liar I would have little trouble proving, beyond reasonable doubt, that I am telling nothing but the truth and that she is in fact a liar of almost epic proportions.

However apparently Palin herself  remains blithely unaware that her web of deception has been untangled, and seems confident that she will never be held accountable for the egregious lies that she told to the American people. As further evidenced by this response on Gretawire to Van Susteren's post:

SHP Private • 4 hours ago − Greta - I appreciate how conscientious you are regarding the bigger picture surrounding issues like this. The public appreciates your fairness & willingness to bring to light more background info. You & John have a great day! - Sarah Palin

Greta Van Susteren interviews Mike Tyson, decides to take the opportunity to ask him about his "wombshifter" comments about Sarah Palin. Oh no she didn't!

Courtesy of Mediaite: “I know you,” Van Susteren said to her guest, “I’ve seen you with the pigeons, I’ve seen you with your family, but then recently — I didn’t understand this — you were on a radio show and you said something very hurtful about raping Governor Sarah Palin.” 

“I never said that,” Tyson defended. “You must have misquoted something, I never said anything bad about Mrs. Palin being raped.” 

He then explained what he meant by the “wombshifter” remark: 

"I made a comment about her having sex with a black man; her being such a streak right-winger. Somebody was doing the research and she was having a love affair with a black basketball player. And I said, um, the gentleman that she had an affair with was a very kind, nice guy, very likable guy. And I said that wouldn’t make big news: a black guy and a white woman being involved. And I said she needed somebody more outrageous, maybe like Dennis Rodman or somebody, then that would be big news. But the gentleman she had a relationship with before was a very kind guy, and that wasn’t anything bizarre." 

Van Susteren responded that the remarks came off as “derogatory towards women.” With that in mind, she asked, “Would you apologize for it?” 

“I didn’t say anything derogatory,” Tyson said. “I didn’t find a reason to apologize.”

Let me first say that at one time I was a big fan of Mike Tyson. I used to watch boxing matches constantly and he dominated the sport in the late eighties and early nineties.

However my opinion of him took several hard hits after he started beating his wife, biting off chunks of his opponent's ear, and threatening to eat their children.

After that I sort of cooled off, and then later cooled off to boxing in general when I began to learn more about brain injury.

However I would always take Iron Mike's side over Palin's, because though he is a very damaged person, he is a very damaged person who admits to being very damaged. Sarah Palin is a very damaged person who does not.

And I will do so again here.

In fact Tyson did NOT say anything about raping Sarah Palin.

This is what he DID say in response to the news of her one night stand with Glen Rice: 

“Glen Rice is a wonderful man,” Tyson said. “He’s a wonderful guy. You want her to be with somebody like [Dennis] Rodman getting up … in there. Pushing her guts up in the back of her head!” 

Tyson went on to say that Rice was too “non-threatening.” 

“Glen Rice is a nice, mellow, docile man, non-threatening guy,” he said. “You want someone like Rodman — yeah baby! Let’s get that donkey in here now. [laughter] Just imagine Palin with a big old black stallion ripping. Yeehaw!” 

Tyson was asked if Palin earned his vote by allegedly being open to sex with black men. Tyson explained that, as a felon, he is unable to vote. But he offered his opinion about what the allegation means for Palin’s standing in the black community. 

“She could always get boned out by a black person, a vote to bang her,” Tyson said. “Other than a vote to run office, the only thing she can do … she’s not a bad person because she likes black people at least in her.” 

Later in the interview, Tyson had a name for what Palin “needed.” 

“Sarah Palin … she met the ‘wombshifter.’” 

See? No rape. Just a somewhat crude man exalting the fact that the face of Republican racism got her womb shifted by a black man.

Was it polite? No.

Was it politically correct? No.

Was it worthy of mocking? Oh hell yes!

However what I think is more interesting, is that Greta was willing to bring this whole thing back up.

Surely she must know that Sarah Palin's base of supporters are deeply, deeply racist, and that bringing this whole thing up again can only remind them that she once spread her legs for one of them darkies.

Why would Greta do that? Unless......

Salon's Joan Walsh: "Palin’s return to Fox shows that Roger Ailes knows the GOP can’t win back the White House in 2016."

Courtesy of Salon:  

I stopped paying much attention to Palin around the time she self-destructed by trying to make herself the victim after the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the shooting of 18 other people in Tucson, Ariz., in January 2011. After that, not only my attention but others’ seemed to drift away. She declared that she wouldn’t run for president, surprising no one, her spots on Fox News became less frequent (to her loud complaints) and, ultimately, the right-wing network didn’t renew her contract (though it was stated as her choice; she was going on to better things). I thought maybe Palin didn’t matter anymore. 

But she continued to be the big crowd-pleaser at conservative gatherings from CPAC to the NRA convention, where she mocked Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun politics by slugging a Big Gulp, taking on the whole elite, effete nanny state her admirers imagine threatens them. Still, it was her attack on Bush this weekend that made me realize the extent to which she could become the face of the white nativist backlash, which is a dangerous development for the GOP, and the country, but a cushy, natural perch for Palin. 

Bush, you probably heard, made a dumb play for conservatives to support immigration reform by claiming older white America needs their … babies. “Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population,” the former Florida governor told Reed’s convening on Friday. Alex Seitz-Wald noted immediately what a mistake that was: Bush was stating some of the very reasons that the far right opposes immigration reform. And he did it the same day we got the news that deaths among native-born whites were outpacing their births. Way to rub it in, Jeb! 

Well, Palin rubbed Bush’s nose in his mistake, trashing him ideologically while using her trademark sex appeal. You kind of have to see it – her hair has never been bigger, and she mocked Bush with such visible self-confidence and self-satisfaction: 

"It’s dangerous, touchy territory to debate this over one race’s fertility rate, and I say this as one who’s kind of fertile herself. I don’t think that’s where we want to go in deciding how we will incentify [sic] the hard-working families who want to be in the line, follow the law and become American citizens, versus those whose very first act on American soil is to break the law…"

Note that Bush didn’t mention any specific race as being either more or less fertile. Native-born Americans of every race tend to have fewer children than immigrants. It was Palin who perceived an insult to the fertility of white people – and who had to therefore remind us of her own. (Which those of us on this blog know is just as phony as her hair.)


Palin’s return to Fox shows that Roger Ailes knows the GOP can’t win back the White House in 2016, so he may as well focus on consolidating his audience, and keeping them comfortable as they watch the further decline of what Bill O’Reilly called “the white establishment” that was vanquished by Barack Obama.

So Palin's inherent racism is no longer being discussed only on "defunct" blogs but has now been accepted as fact by the mainstream. Nice to see that the drum we have been beating for the last five years now has a few more drumsticks to increase the volume of the tunes we play.

By the way, THIS was how one of the Palin-bots responded to Joan's article:

@joanwalsh jealous bitch! Maybe if u did ur hair and wore women cloths; didn't seem like a transgender wanna b u might look like a girl

— Alexandra Foster (@KAFosterSowell) June 17, 2013

Yes the ONLY reason that anybody would criticize Sarah Palin is because they are jealous. Hah!

While we are on the subject of Palin I thought you all might enjoy this video of Joe McGinniss, which I had never seen,  that suddenly showed up today, talking about moving in next to the Palins.

You know it suddenly dawns on me that my first meeting with Joe took place on the morning of this Monday which he is talking about here.

I actually do remember asking him where he was going to live and he told me it was someplace in Anchorage. I only found out later, after Palin's famous Facebook post, where he eventually took up residence.

Palin-bot FINALLY allows the scales to fall from her eyes. I swear these are the slowest people on the planet!

From TownHall:  

You are beginning to worry me. I am afraid you are losing touch with the people of whom your fame is based. (You cannot "lose touch" with people you never gave a shit about in the first place.) I, after all, was one of your biggest supporters once. I am thrilled that you get invitations to go to NBA games, that you display your Chick-fil-A shirt, and that you go and support your daughter and her celebrity friends on Dancing with the Stars. 

But at CPAC last week you made a rush for the exits. After you gave an inspiring speech where you said to a thrilled audience, “At a time when our country is desperate for leadership, we get instead a permanent campaign“. Instead of coming out and shaking the hands of those who you inspire, you quickly left the building without even a second glance. (What? She wants Palin to mingle with the little people? Boy does she not know this woman very well!)


You called out the liberal media as being unashamed, so at least you took notice of them. Not so for those of us on the right who had hoped that the woman from Wasilla, Alaska might understand our plight and give us a chance to engage one of the top names in the movement. (Yeah, couldn't you insult us a little too? At least give us something!)


We were, to put it bluntly, disappointed. And while I wish this was a solo occurrence, unfortunately this seems to be your pattern. (Gee, ya think?)


I know we in the Tea Party movement don’t throw the best parties or live the most glamorous lives, but we are the ones who faithfully donated to the McCain campaign once you joined the ticket. We are the ones who defended you publicly when the liberal media made fun of you and when your own campaign advisors turned on you. We are the ones who add you and your family to our prayers every night at bedtime. (And don't you feel stupid now?)


Yet it seems those in Hollywood who have made their money making you the butt of their jokes get more of your attention than the movement you helped inspire. 

As a working mother in political journalism, I always looked to your journey as a source of inspiration. (Boy are there a couple of book THIS woman needs to read!) It was a testament to the fact that a woman can use her professional talents and not let her family suffer. The other side wants to make female conservatives feel like we are put in binders and that our party doesn’t encourage women to grow in our careers. (I'm just going to let this part go. Too easy.)


Whether it is Dr. Rice, Rep Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and legions of others, time and time again conservative women prove this statement to be false. But what makes us different is that women on our side are not afraid to come off the stage and get involved with the people they claim to represent and champion. 

Our party does not need another “celebrity.” One of the best attributes of today’s Republicans is that we do not hide behind the curtain and only come out to chat when there is a teleprompter present. The American conservative wants an honest and humble spokesman unafraid to mill about with real people, to listen.

" The American conservative wants an honest and humble spokesman unafraid to mill about with real people, to listen?" Boy were they barking up the wrong tree!

Okay clearly this poor woman is still a moron. But at least she is a moron that has finally recognized that the "Liberal Left" has been right about Sarah Palin all along.

Boy THAT must burn her ass!

Joe McGinniss interview, from earlier this year, reveals that there was NEVER any hope of Sarah Palin getting her Fox News contract renewed.

The entire video is quite informative, and you should watch it all, but this is the portion that I found interesting considering what has happened the last few days. And it starts at the 3:26 mark in the video:

Reporter: "In each case there is that disconnect between the public and private image of these individuals."

McGinniss: "Never more so than with Palin, She is all about image. It was remarkable talking to people who've known her from her childhood, her young adulthood, her time as mayor of Wasilla, even as governor of Alaska, they didn't recognize this woman they saw on national television, She utterly transformed herself. There's never been a greater dichotomy between the image and the reality,"

Joe goes on to describe Palin as "a nitwit," "a religious fanatic," vicious," "spiteful," and "ignorant."  You know, accurately.

After that he goes on to say, when speaking of his friend Roger Ailes,  that "I can guarantee you that Roger's not going to renew her contract with Fox News. It runs through this presidential campaign. Roger told me two years ago, we had lunch, and I was just starting my work on Sarah Palin. And he said 'Joe, why are you writing about her? She's so stupid, she's such a nitwit, and she's never going to be anything in American politics. Her time is already over. In 2012 she's not going to be the candidate. She couldn't possibly be the candidate. Too many people are getting to know her, and what they see terrifies them.'"

So I guess for any of those people that think Palin really had a shot at renewing her contract, not so much.

In fact in the Daily Beast article, titled "Fox Made limited Effort to Keep Sarah Palin," that cane out yesterday it all but says as much. They made a tiny offer, just to say that they had (And to keep her crazed fans from burning down their building,), but Ailes was just done with her.

Now here is an interesting thing. I don't think I knew that Joe had revealed that part about Roger Ailes last spring. I did cover his Australian trip to some degree, but I think I may have missed this particular interview.

However back in 2010, while sitting on that porch in Wasilla, Joe DID hint at something similar during a conversation with me. Of course it was told in the strictest of confidences but Joe did tell me that Ailes truly disliked Palin, and that he had done nothing to dissuade him from writing about her in a book.

Apparently what he meant was that Ailes had not tried to talk him out of writing about her for HER sake, but instead apparently suggested he not write about her for HIS sake, because she simply was not worth it.

And do you know what? In the end I think Roger Ailes may have been right.