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.

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.

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.

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?

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......

NEVER one to let go of a grudge, Sarah Palin has a ghostwritten attack on Joe McGinniss published on rabid Right Wing blog.

Sarah Palin is famous for going after people who she believes have done her wrong, and is also known for NEVER letting go of her hatred for these people who dare damage her reputation by pointing out the truth.

So today Palin had a ghostwriter post a hateful diatribe against Joe over at the now truly defunct Andrew Bretbart's old website. (Well Breitbart himself is "defunct" anyhow.)

Essentially she discusses a new book which examines the Jeffrey MacDonald case that was at the heart of Joe's famous book "Fatal Vision," and resurrects the claim that McGinniss gained MacDonald's trust, claiming he believed that he was innocent, only to turn on him when he became convinced of his guilt. And then takes it a step further by implicating McGinniss in the perception of MacDonald's guilt, which the author believes is false.

Now I only know what I have read about the trial, and saw presented in the television movie adapted from Joe's book, so I don't have any real idea of whether MacDonald was guilty or innocent.

I did talk to Joe very briefly about it once, after it was dredged up while he was still living next to Palin, and he expressed confidence that MacDonald was indeed guilty. And that he had dealt with the man fairly.

However the reason this is worthy of a post is to, once again, illustrate just how vindictive Palin is, and to what extremes she will go to in order to injure or frighten those that dare stand up to her, or who she identifies as an enemy. (A list that WE all know is almost too long to read in one sitting.)

McGinniss, to his eternal credit, may in fact have been the one to have finally put that proverbial stake through Palin's political aspirations for all time. So of course she hates him with the white hot hate of a woman who despises men in general, and despises men who will not succumb to her "charms" even more.

Joe was not only unimpressed with Palin, he wrote a book telling the world exactly WHY she was unimpressive, and potentially dangerous.

Of course Palin lacks the talent to do her own dirty work so in this case she simply used one of Breitbart's journalistic hit-men to write a screed and then stamped it with one of her cloven hooves.

Here you tell me if this sounds like it came from the cottage cheese filled head of the Lunatic from Lake Lucille:

I don’t normally read “true crime” books, and I’ve certainly never written a review of one, but Errol Morris’ new book, “A Wilderness of Error,” isn’t typical of the genre. It’s much more interesting and I think important. It’s a book about the failings of a legal system administered by very fallible human beings, and it’s a book about how we buy into false media narratives that tidy up uncomfortably complex stories and give us permission to call off any further search for truth – and, yes, Morris argues with refreshing clarity that objective truth is real and worthy of being sought after despite the pretentious nonsense preached in faculty lounges about all truth being relative. In fact, he argues passionately that the search for truth is what journalism and justice is all about.

"Pretentious," "fallible,"  "isn't typical of the genre." Does any of that sound like Palin-speak to any of you? Of course not.

No this is just another example of Palin smelling blood in the water and going for the jugular like she has over and over again in the past. And essentially it reveals far more about HER than it does her intended target.

Look "Fatal Vision" was written four decades ago, and nothing that Palin or this writer say about the circumstances surrounding the case will have any significant impact on Joe McGinniss, his reputation, or his future endeavors.

However Joe's book "The Rogue" DID have a very significant and disasterous impact on a certain treacherous politician who caters to the very worst in American politics, and whose influence is STILL causing negative ramifications throughout our now fragile political system. And for that the American people owe him a great debt of gratitude.

In other words, nice try Sarah, but we still know who actually ran Wasilla while you were Mayor, that even those close to you doubt you gave birth to Trig, and that you at one time used your position as a part time sportscaster to seduce a young basketball player named Glen Rice.

And NOTHING you have ghostwritten about the author of that information will EVER erase it from our minds.

And no giving us the evil eye will not change that either.

Here's an interview with Joe McGinniss that took place during the recent Sydney Writer's Festival.

I am a few days late on this, the interview took place last week on the 23rd, however I thought that today might be a good day to share this little trip down memory lane.

I cannot embed the interview but you can hear it by clicking here. (It lasts about an hour.)

Joe discusses everything from how he came to write the book, his experiences living next door to her (He says that Todd Palin is 5 foot 5, and all mouth.), and, towards the end, his lack of faith in her version of Trig's birth. (I never get tired of hearing that discussed on mainstream media venues.)

Joe e-mailed me about this event and mentioned this in his e-mail: Incidentally, in Sydney, on Saturday, a thousand people paid twenty bucks and stood on line for more than an hour to see and hear me talk about Trig, among other things.

Joe also said that the people of Australia CANNOT figure out why the American journalists have never pursued the inconsistencies in her birth story.

Well join the club my Aussie friends.

Joe McGinniss is not to yet quite finished talking about Sarah Palin. This time in Australia.

"The Rogue" stripped away the Palin mythology and revealed to the world what lay beneath . Eww!

Courtesy of The Sydney Morning Herald:

 His research - or at least his accommodation in Alaska - made news around the world. "Joe McGinniss has rented the house next to the Palin family's lakeside home in Wasilla, Alaska, for five months while he completes his work," reported this paper's website in May 2010. 

"Palin did everything she could to stop it," says McGinniss. "She threatened. She had a lawyer announce she was considering a lawsuit." That didn't happen. But within weeks of publication, Palin announced she would not be running in 2012. 

McGinniss is far from claiming sole responsibility. As he sees it, Palin faced two problems running for the Republican nomination this year: she didn't have a hope of winning and any attempt would expose her to the sort of scrutiny that would put at risk her lucrative new career as a political celebrity. 

"These people worked out a way to game the system," McGinniss says of the Palin family. "I don't blame them. They are just grifters who suddenly saw a chance at the main chance and they were clever enough and canny enough to take it. The American media was so gullible and the right wing was so desperate for new heroic figures that they basically got a free ride. She knew she wouldn't get a free ride this year in 2012." 

His attack on Palin is full throttle. "I think everything about her is false. I think her claims of super Christianity are as false as everything else. She discovered who she needed to be to play to a very small audience in her town of Wasilla and she has calculated her way every step of the way. There has been an opening for a woman of the extreme right. She saw that. 

"Even in Alaska there were no openings for educated, intelligent women of the left because Alaska - part of the anomaly that is the state - had a number of those already. What they needed was a militant crusader for evangelical values. And she combined - and we can never underestimate this - raw sex appeal with Christian platitudes. The Anchorage Daily News called her 'The Joan of Arc of Alaska politics'. There was nothing subtle about it." 

What followed in his eyes was a tale of cunning and vengeance; high ambition and lazy performance; bobsleds and cocaine; a toxic marriage that saw Todd sleeping on the couch most nights and the kids roaming the neighbourhood looking for a feed. Then young Track was shunted off to the military after the high-school bus fleet was mysteriously vandalised one winter. 

"I laughed," says McGinniss. "The closer I got and the more people I talked to who knew her, the more I laughed. After a while laughter gave way to a numb stupefaction that this brainless, venal, definitely crafty, religious fanatic and self-aggrandising bimbo could have become a powerful factor in national politics." 

The Herald even asked Joe about the mystery of Trig:

McGinniss devotes hilarious and scurrilous pages to the mystery of little Trig, the Down syndrome baby born soon after Palin won John McCain's endorsement. "The story she tells of her pregnancy and the birth simply can't be true," says McGinniss who wonders if the "birth" was designed to make Palin the poster child of the Right to Life. 

"It would be the most cynical ploy and the greatest hoax ever pulled off in American politics," he says. Pursuing the story with him are bloggers and the influential columnist Andrew Sullivan. But McGinniss despairs of the failure of the "establishment media" to take the story seriously. He doesn't believe the issue is yet settled either way: "I remain Trignostic," he says. 

I have to say that I know Joe is FAR from Trognostic, but I also know that he was very frustrated that he was never able to crack open that particular part of the Palin mythology.

Still he managed to bring the controversy to the forefront of the American audience for a short time, and may very well have been the MAIN reason why Palin has moved as far away from the political scene as she has recently.

And now Joe will be in Australia this month to discuss this most scandalous of deceptions with an entirely new audience.  And didn't "Sarah Palin-You Betcha!" just start appearing on Australian TV recently as well?

Why yes it did!

Sarah Palin was "obsessed with running for President." Gee, I wonder what happened?

Courtesy of Business Insider:


Palin was "obsessed" with running and convinced she could win, according to one of Palin's closest advisors, who added that he was amazed by the "intensity and detail that she knew about the candidates, all the process, all the debates." 

She even insisted on watching all of the debates and analyzing the candidates afterwards, he said. But Palin's White House ambitions appeared to be driven, at least in part, by a desire to protect her celebrity and guard her turf. 

But when her Merry Prankster road trip fell flat over the summer, Palin's presidential hopes deflated quickly.

I have long felt, and repeated often, that Sarah Palin never had any REAL desire to win the presidency.

However, I was never exactly sure how far she wanted to milk the "idea" of launching a campaign. In other words, I was never sure if she would back out before she actually had to declare, declare and then drop out before the first debate, or try to stick it out for a couple of initial debates, and then use her family as an excuse to get out and go back on the speaking circuit, and then possibly have a book ghostwritten for her about her experiences.

We all know what ended up actually taken place, which was that she simply never even started a serious campaign, but with this information I am now thinking THAT might not have been the original plan.

In fact, if this tidbit of information is correct, than Palin might have really been serious about launching campaign with an open ended plan for dropping out when things got too hot.

What changed? What made her quite abruptly decide definitively that she was not going to continue to drag her political prick tease out any longer?

I DON'T think it was that bizarre bus trip. Personally I think it was "The Rogue," Joe McGinniss's book that changed her mind.

During an interview Joe was asked if HE thought that his book had any impact on Palin's decision not to run. Joe said that he did (As you may remember Palin declared she would not run on October 5, right in the middle of Joe's book tour.), and believed that she had been shocked with what he had discovered and was afraid that during a campaign journalists might dig up even more.

At first I thought that indicated a little hubris on the part of McGinniss, but I have to say that he might very well have been absolutely accurate.

So, though many great journalists, authors, and bloggers, have all had a part in bringing the truth out about Sister Sarah, perhaps it really was the work of Joe McGinniss that ultimately drove the stake through the heart of her political ambitions.

And yes, I do very much think it had everything to do with the fact that he brought "babygate" out onto the national stage, in away that it  had really never been exposed before.

Joe McGinniss interview with Mike Porcaro, right wing radio host in what is clearly no longer "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Update!

You can hear the full one hour interview here.

Joe does not pull any punches here in defending his use of anonymous sources, the Palin induced fear which grips the people of Wasilla, and the utter dishonesty that permeates Sarah's personality.

In the second half of the interview Porcaro asks Joe to discuss the issue of babygate, and Joe does not shy away from the topic in any way. Though he still claims to be a "Trig-nostic" his focus on the issue indicates otherwise.

Now you must remember that this is a RIGHT WING radio host on the same radio station that also broadcasts programs by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Mike Huckabee, yet Porcaro allows Joe to go into great detail about the pregnancy hoax without once interrupting him, which should indicate just how completely OVER Sarah Palin Alaskans are these days.

I ma certainly NOT a fan of Porcaro, but I have to admit that this was one of the best interviews I have heard Joe give thus far.

Update: For those who are having trouble hearing the entire interview, here is a better version that I found over at Progressive Alaska:

John Williams radio interview with Joe McGinniss.

Courtesy of WGN Radio:

John talks to the author, Joe McGinniss about his book The Rogue, Searching for the Real Sarah Palin and why he decided to write a book on Sarah Palin. Joe discusses his time in Wasilla, Alaska researching the book including a confrontation with Todd Palin. Many topics come up including controversy about the birth of her child Trig, her relationship with Glenn Rice and more.

It has been awhile since we all heard how Joe is doing so I thought you might enjoy hearing how upbeat he is and that he is still beating the drum about the implausibility of Palin's version of Trig's birth story.

Just click the link to listen for yourself.

Joe McGinniss corrects the erroneous reports that "The Rogue" is not selling well.

Courtesy of Joe's blog:

THE ROGUE is selected as an “Editor’s Choice” in the October 9 edition of the New York Times Book Review. That is a distinction not carelessly awarded. 

It also debuts on the New York Times Best-Seller list on October 9, as #7 on the e-book nonfiction list, and as #10 on the hard-cover list. 

And that’s on the basis of only the first six days of sales, not even a full week.  

Some hostile Beltway sites gleefully pointed to the fact that THE ROGUE had sold “only” six thousand copies, as recorded by Bookscan. 

As if 1,000 copies a day was a poor rate of sale. 

In fact, the Bookscan number of 6,000 represents only 75 percent of hard-cover sales. 

So make the six thousand 8,000. 

And Bookscan does not include e-book sales, so nobody buying for a Kindle or Nook gets counted. Given that the NYTimes list ranks the book even higher on its e-book best seller list than on its hard-cover list, we can add another 8,000. 

And then there’s Canada, whose sales are not included, and which average up to ten percent of U.S. sales. 

Ten percent of 16,000=1,600. So a more realistic count of sales over the first six days would be at least 17,500. 

Hey, the numbers will be what they will be. 

But the MSM attempt to spin the first six days into evidence of “lukewarm” reception is dishonest. 

In any case, having first made the New York Times Best-Seller List top ten in 1969, and having made it again in 2011, that gives me best-sellers written over a span of 42 years, which my publisher believes to be a record.

They did the best they could. 

And they came from both the right and the left of the political arena. Dismissing, undermining, attacking, literally doing everything in their power to sabotage this book and keep it out of the hands of the very people who desperately needed to understand just how close they had come to allowing a crazy person to be the Vice President of the United States.

One even going so far as to forward a personal e-mail to an individual so despicable that they will NEVER be able to shower off the stench of their collaboration.

Yet McGinniss, and his book "The Rogue," persevere. As all TRUE lovers of truth and justice should have wanted, and worked for, all along.

And that is very bad news for a certain half term Governor, and very GOOD news for the rest of us.

No surprise to Alaskans that some of the people who dared to speak to Joe McGinnisss on the record are now being threatened.

Courtesy of Winnipeg Free Press:

Author Joe McGinniss says some of the people quoted by name in his controversial book on Sarah Palin have been threatened since its release last week. 

"A couple of them have already gotten some blowback," McGinniss said Thursday in a telephone interview from Toronto, where he was in town promoting "The Rogue: Searching For The Real Sarah Palin." 

"One guy was even told he'd better watch his back because it's going to be a long winter; he might not see the end of it because he has such a big mouth." 

After months spent fending off similar threats when he moved next door to the former Alaska governor last year while researching the book in Wasilla, Alaska, McGinniss suspects Todd Palin and his pals.

"Todd really is a bully," he alleges with a sigh. 

This is the point that has to driven home repeatedly concerning why so many people will NOT speak on the record about Palin and her numerous scandals.  Because they are terrified of just this kind of thing happening to them.

And if anybody has reason to doubt Joe, then listen to what Nick Broomfield has to say on that same topic:

To make matters worse, word had spread throughout the town that Broomfield was intending to make “a hit piece” on Palin, which scared many of the townspeople into silence, with one former Palin classmate worried that speaking out against Palin would ruin him financially in Wasilla. And that's when things got strange. 

“I got Anchorage police calling me up, then I started getting some weird phone calls to the office—people calling me ‘scum' and a lot of people just saying one word and then hanging up,” said Broomfield. “Just creepy stuff.” 

By the way in this interview Joe also responds to a question about the letter from Palin's lawyer threatening a lawsuit:

Although Palin has dismissed the book as defamatory and warns she will sue, Crown Publishers says it stands by the book and its author, while McGinniss says he's not worried. 

"Anybody can have a lawyer write a letter threatening to sue," he said. "To actually sue is a very different business and you open yourself to a discovery process."

I have it on good authority that Joe is chomping at the bit for the opportunity to face Palin in a courtroom.  There are some on the Right who claim that he and his publisher are in deep doo doo and that because the lawsuit would take place in Alaska that McGinniss and his Crown Publishers are sweating the cost involved in traveling back and forth to Alaska.

Bullshit! Take it from me, Joe LOVES Alaska, and if he could get his publishers to foot the bill to fly him back and forth, while also receiving tons of press for his book during a lawsuit against Sarah Palin, the man would be in hog heaven!

Author of "The Lies of Sarah Palin" comes to the defense of rival author Joe McGinniss.

Courtesy of Firedoglake:

Five days before a literary embargo theoretically prohibited any reviews from appearing in the mainstream media, the New York Times delivered what was effectively a journalistic hit (executed by Janet Maslin) on bestselling author Joe McGinniss and his long-awaited book-length profile of Alaska’s former governor, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. 

I was nearly three-quarters of the way through it by the time that Maslin’s review was first posted on the Times web site. I was immediately appalled by its intellectual dishonesty, its distorted portrait of the book, and its unbridled demonization of McGinniss. She calls the book “dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access.” Really? Then why, one must ask, has the book caused such a ruckus? Are there reports on the Internet, for instance, of Palin’s mass firing of people of color during her first weeks as Governor of Alaska or personal accounts of her dominionist religious beliefs? Is there a full-scale work that combines the elegance and depth of McGinniss’ reporting into a composite narrative? I think not. Indeed, the power of The Rogue is that the whole of its devastating narrative is greater than the sum of its parts.

I should also acknowledge that I am the author of an earlier book on the former Alaska governor, The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power, published by St. Martin’s in May, and which I suppose in some people’s eyes would make me something of a competitor with McGinniss, though I never looked at it that way. I sensed at the outset that our books would be very different—and they are, told through very different eyes and voices, and with an entirely different focus—although they come to startlingly similar conclusions about Ms. Palin, both as a human being and as a political figure. While I have never met McGinniss personally, we were introduced by email last year through mutual friends in Alaska and we occasionally communicated (or, more accurately, commiserated) about the poisonous ordeal of covering Palin. But I had not seen a single word of the McGinniss book until I read the first “installment” in Doonesbury, which featured excerpts from the book (all by “named” sources, incidentally), and then received a review copy that arrived in the mail later that week.

Moreover, roughly nine months after the assassination attempt on Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords—over whose congressional district Palin had placed crosshair images on her SarahPAC website—there’s not a single mention by Maslin of Palin’s troubling behavior and commentary, both before and after the carnage that left six innocent bystanders dead and another 13 wounded; nor is there a single reference to her many demagogic (and unsubstantiated) claims regarding President Obama, with whom she is strangely obsessed (her charges of “death panels” and “palling around with terrorists” come immediately to mind). Nor does Maslin mention Palin’s troubling behavior on the campaign trail, with her ramped up rhetoric that lead respected Congressmember John Lewis to condemn Palin for “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” throughout the country. All of this is apparently forgiven, or conveniently forgotten, by Maslin, whose Sarah Palin is—once again—a victim. Poor Sarah. Poor, poor Sarah Palin.

I cannot urge you strongly enough to read the entire article by Geoffrey Dunn.  And while doing so please keep in mind that Geoffrey did his OWN painstaking research into the life of Sarah Palin, and essentially wrote about THE EXACT SAME PERSON that Joe McGinniss described in his book.

I would like all of you to also remember that this person described in Joe and Geoffrey's book bears a striking resemblance to the person also described in the book "Game Change," Frank Bailey's book, and, yes, even Levi Johnston's book.

Which by the way is the exact same person that I have been writing about for these last three years.

So why did Joe's book receive such vitriol and hatred, while others have only received what could probably be described as a simple slap on the wrist?

Well if you read Chapter Nineteen, I do believe that will answer your questions. (Oh and Glen Rice might deserve a little of the credit as well.)

Publishers of "The Rogue" to Palin attorneys: "Book is solid, reliable, and well-substantiated." In other words, "Game On!"

Sarah: "What, they're not afraid?" Todd: "I told you that wouldn't work stupid!"

Courtesy of CBS News:

A publisher is standing behind a book about Sarah Palin, a day after Palin's attorney threatened to sue over it. Crown Publishers spokesman Stuart Applebaum says the company is confident the reporting in Joe McGinniss' book is "solid, reliable, and well-substantiated." 

Applebaum says Crown stands behind McGinniss and the book, "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin." 

Never a doubt in my mind they would call the bluff of Palin's attorneys. Bunch of fucking amateurs!

By the way I guess I should share with all of you one of things about my interactions with Sister Sarah that I think used to make Joe kind of envious.

I was the recipient of a letter from Thomas Van Flein threatening to sue me.

Well I guess he can now cross THAT off his bucket list.

By the way it is only about seven more hours until Palin makes her appearance on the Greta Van "Damn it sucks to be Sarah's bitch" show where we will get to see Sarah demonstrate what this bullshit letter from her lawyers was really all about, by refusing to answer any questions about Joe's book due to "impending legal action."

Of course there is NO "impending legal action," so if Greta was not a pathetic excuse for an interviewer she would bring that up and press her for a response.  But we all know that won't happen!

And this, boys and girls, is why we don't see Palin making anymore appearances on The Factor.  I am pretty confident that O'Reilly would NOT let her get away with that kind of response and would probably tear her a new one, while Roger Ailes chuckled and rubbed his prodigious belly behind the scenes.

Sarah Palin threatens to sue Random House for publishing "The Rogue."

Courtesy of ABC News:

Sarah Palin’s family attorney John Tiemessen has written a letter to Maya Mavjee, the publisher of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, that Palin may sue her, the company, and the book’s author Joe McGinniss “for knowingly publishing false statements” in his book released last week, “The Rogue,” ABC News has learned. 

A source close to the Palins tells ABC News that the “Palins are fighting back and demanding answers from Random House.” 

“Random House is at the top of the food chain and published a book based upon acknowledged unsubstantiated gossip,” the source said. “The revealing email is key as evidence of this defamatory approach to politics through proxies.” 

Tiemessen writes in the letter that the email “clearly describes the fact that Mr. McGinniss researched and investigated many false and scurrilous allegations, and concluded that there was absolutely no evidence anywhere backing these allegations.” 

Palin’s attorney writes that it is “malicious” for Crown to publish the book when it has proof McGinniss and Crown “were fully aware the statements in the book were false, intended to be false, and were intended to harm.” 

“The final work that was published contains most of the stories that Mr. McGinniss complains were nothing more than ‘tawdry gossip’ that amounted to the wishful fantasies of disturbed individuals,” 

Tiemessen writes. “Since both your company, and the author, clearly knew the statements were false, admitted they had no basis in fact or reality, but decided to publish in order to harm Governor Palin’s family, you and Mr. McGinniss have defamed the Palins.” Tiemessen ends the letter by warning the publishing house not to “delete emails or destroy records” that may be used in the suit. 

The email Tiemessen cites in his letter to Mavjee came to light last week when conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted an email between McGinniss and liberal Alaskan blogger, Jesse Griffin. In the email posted on Breitbart’s site without explanation for how they got access to it, McGinniss writes, “Legal review of my manuscript is underway and here’s my problem: no one has ever offered documentation of any of the lurid stories about the Palins.”

I don't know how Joe feels about this but I say "Game On!'

Those of us who have been blogging about Palin for years have been dying to get her into a court room just for the opportunity to go through the discovery portion and watch her try to prove she DID give birth to Trig Palin on April 18, 2008.

Of course Joe did not make that allegation exactly, but he DID make some rather scandalous allegations that I am beyond confident he has the sources to back up.

By the way Palin is famous for threatening to sue people, and then backing off.  I have to doubt that THIS time she will actually go through with it either.

Oh sure it will excite the Palin-bots into a masturbatory frenzy, but does anybody REALLY think she wants all of these scandalous stories played out in a courtroom in front of the national media, who will all of the suddenly take a MUCH more intense interest in a book that she wants everybody to ignore?

But hell if she DOES sue, how much would you give to be a fly on the wall and hear Alaska Republican Lyda Greene, ex-Head of Security Gary Wheeler, Troopergate victim Walt Moneghan, and ex-boy toy Glen Rice testify under oath concerning what THEY know about the Grizzled Mama?

I swear I will clear my entire calendar the minute they start jury deliberations! I would not miss it for the world!

Nick Broomfield, director of the documentary "Sarah Palin: You Betcha!", talks about the fear that Sarah Palin inspires in Wasilla.

Courtesy of The Telegraph:

"There was a genuine fear in the community about saying anything against Sarah Palin because people were worried about the power of the Palins and worried about losing their jobs,” he says. “In some cases, the children were friends with the Palin kids and didn’t want their parents to talk. 

She is such a polarising character that, even within a family, the husband or the wife liked her and the other one didn’t. She inspired such strong opinions that people were either passionately for her or against her.

” The 63-year-old Londoner, whose 30 films include Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, Kurt and Courtney, Biggie and Tupac and the memorable Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher, says, perhaps somewhat disingenuously, that he had no preconceived opinion when he set out to turn his camera and wry style of documentary-making on Palin. 

“I just wanted to understand where she was coming from,” he says. “I didn’t have any strong opinions, and I didn’t know that much about her. I’d seen her on stage with lots of babies and all the rest of it, and I wondered who the hell she was and where she had popped up from and what she believed in. 

“Sometimes when you hear her talking it’s as if she doesn’t quite understand what she’s saying. She comes out with all this stuff and you think, 'Who’s the real person here? You’ve learned the speech, but who are you?’ ” 

“A lot of people would talk off the record but wouldn’t talk on the record, so you pick up an impression, and, even if you can’t quote them, you still get the inside story. One of the things we got from a lot of people there is that she really didn’t spend any time with her kids at all. There seemed to be a big disappointment in the community about her – inevitably, I suppose, when you’re hobnobbing with the McCains and Washington elite – that she had moved on and she had no loyalty to her old friends, who had been left by the wayside.”“T

If you watch Broomfield's documentary you will hear people tell the same exact stories that are in Joe McGinniss's book "The Rogue." Except Joe got more information because he did not ask to put people on camera.

However the fact is that everybody who REALLY investigates Sarah Palin hears the same stories, by a variety of different people. And simply calling them "haters" or "disgruntled ex-staff members" does not negate the truth of what they are willing to share.

By the way, I have a name for these people as well.  I call them "Heroes."