Wasilla
Why is Sarah silent about her newest grandchild? UPDATE://Kyla Grace was, in fact, born on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011
August 8, 2011
A commenter here says Kyla Grace Palin was actually born on Saturday, not yesterday.
I received a phone call around noon on Saturday that Britta’s baby girl had been born – around 6 1/2 pounds.
The birth had gone very quickly so much so that Britta’s dad didn’t make it to the hospital in time. It makes me sad for her that Palin’s control of Wasilla is so intense that people can’t share in her joy. I know that the friends at church heard about the happy event but people are afraid to say anything.
This makes it even more strange that Sarah and Todd have not welcomed their first granddaughter into the world with a joyous public announcement.
It would hardly be an invasion of Track and Britta’s privacy for the grandparents–on either side–to announce the birth.
And it’s hardly a secret. My mention of it here this morning led to national and worldwide coverage, including in Sarah’s favorite glossy magazine/website People.
So why the prolonged silence from Wasilla? Could Sarah possibly be embarrassed that her two oldest children have now followed in her footsteps by conceiving babies outside of–to use a good ole’ 19th Century word–wedlock?
Or is she planning to announce the birth to Greta Van Susteren on Fox News?
Or, just maybe, is she still negotiating her fee for the first photo of her holding her first granddaughter?
UPDATE:
I’ve just received confirmation that Kyla Grace Palin was, in fact, born last Saturday, not Sunday, as I first posted. Which means it’s now going on three days without Sarah–so quick to parade Trig in public–or Bristol–so quick to put her own baby on a book cover–even publicly recognizing the existence of Kyla Grace.
Someday, this beautiful infant will become a young woman able to research facts about her own birth. How will she feel when she finds that her once-famous grandmother tried to suppress the news that she was born?
Posted in Greta Van Susteren, Joe McGinniss, Palin children, Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Uncategorized, Wasilla | 
Tags: britta palin, Fox News, kyla grace palin, people magazine, track palin | 
93 Comments »
Nick Broomfield Palin film to debut in Toronto
August 4, 2011
I left Alaska before Nick Broomfield got there last year, but I’ve been in email contact with him and know he’s spoken to many of the friends I made there in 2010.
I also know the high quality of his work.
Thus, I’m delighted to learn that Nick’s Palin documentary will be a highlight of the Toronto Film Festival from September 8-18.
I couldn’t have a better opening act for THE ROGUE, which will be published on September 20.
Let me rephrase that: I don’t consider Nick Broomfield an opening act for anyone. He’s one of the best documentary filmmakers in the world, and I’m proud and happy to share September with him. Let’s hope his “Sarah Palin–You Betcha!” will receive national distribution throughout the U.S.
Regarding THE ROGUE, so much is happening in terms of national media bookings that my return to Alaska may have to be delayed.
Looks like there will be so many Lower Forty-Eight media appearances between mid-September and mid-October that I simply won’t have time to make the long–and longed-for–trek back to Lake Lucille and environs until after the first wave of fun and furor has subsided.
I’ll share details here as soon as I’m permitted to do so.
But for now, like the book itself, details of publicity appearances are embargoed.
Posted in Joe McGinniss, Sarah Palin, The Rogue, Wasilla | Tags: nick broomfield, toronto | 52 Comments »
To put things in perspective: My family
August 2, 2011
PROMPTED BY SARAH PALIN’S SICK SUGGESTION last spring that I had rented a house next to hers on Lake Lucille so I could watch her mow her lawn or peer into her daughters’ bedrooms, hundreds of her sick-o-fants sent me abusive and threatening emails.
I wasn’t bothered by the threats, nor was my wife, Nancy, who’d been with me in Alaska in 1976–when she was an award-winning reporter for the Anchorage Daily News–and who came back to join me on Lake Lucille last summer.
But I wasn’t going to subject the beautiful children pictured above to any sort of danger.
After a right-wing radio talk show host broadcast my personal email address, I had to open a new account.
And after Palin fanatics put my home phone number online, Nancy began to receive threatening phone calls.
One charming commenter on Andrew Breitbart’s website posted this:
“Joe’s lonely wife needs mail, phone calls and other assurances of concern and good will in Joe’s absence.”
Some psychos even went to my agent’s Facebook page and began to threaten his wife.
And one of my sons, the father of a very young child, was warned that because of my having moved next door to the Palins, his toddler might not be safe.
Then I got an email that said:
“hey, Joe, sleep with one eye open, you POS. can’t wait for your grandkids to show up and play in the woods and water.”
I’m sorry to say that after receiving that threat I canceled all plans to have my children and grandchildren visit me in Alaska last summer.
It’s too bad. The kids pictured above, who range from fourteen to four, are warm and wonderful and not only love and enjoy each other, but would have been quick to invite little kids from next door to come over and play in our yard.
But I wasn’t about to put my grandchildren in somebody’s crosshairs.
So we never had a great Alaska reunion last summer. Sarah’s bullies spoiled that.
But they couldn’t spoil this past weekend, when all seven grandkids and their parents–my children–were here, at our real home.
You want to talk family values, Sarah?
Mine against yours any day of the week, babe.
I’m blessed to have a family as enriched by true values, as inspired by love, and as giving and caring as any on the face of our sweet earth.
What a joy it’s been to have everyone here.
I especially enjoyed the comment from one of the kids, who said, “Grandpa, why did you waste all that time writing a book about a crazy lady nobody even remembers any more?”
Out of the mouths of babes, eh?
Posted in Breitbart, Joe McGinniss, Palin children, Sarah Palin, The Rogue, Wasilla | 102 Comments »
Guns, Guns, Guns: They kill more people than nuclear weapons. UPDATE//Sarah’s record in Wasilla
July 23, 2011
IT’S NOT ONLY IN AMERICA
Crazed gunman kills at least 80 teenagers at summer camp on island near Oslo.
Why is a deranged person able to assemble his own arsenal, anywhere in the world?
I’ll leave it to the Norwegian government to answer that question in their own terms, after they bury their innocents.
But I’ll tell you why it happens in the USA: because our politicians are cowed by the gun lobby and the GOP, and any
crazy person who wants one can have himself or herself a gun almost overnight. And that’s legally.
Every time an innocent person is gunned down by a lunatic with a gun, spatters from the blood fall on the hands of U.S. political figures who blindly shout about “the right to bear arms,” as if this was 1776, not 2011.
Naming names? Who has been more outspoken about this than Sarah Palin?
Is she directly to blame for the catastrophe in Norway? Of course not. No more than she was directly to blame for the near-assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson.
But do she and her followers, who preach the virtues of private citizens owning firearms, have at least metaphorical blood on their hands every time a new madman shoots innocent people, whether children or adults?
You bet they do.
Will the Norwegian catastrophe change attitudes in the USA?
Might it move Sarah to say that maybe private citizens should not be allowed to build their own arsenals?
You bet it won’t.
Sure, people kill people. But crazed people armed with guns are killing more and more, every day, every month, every year.
Who’ll stop the rain?
11 Who’ll Stop the Rain
UPDATE:
As I write in the THE ROGUE, during Sarah’s first campaign for mayor of Wasilla, she was in favor of two things: allowing Wasilla bars to stay open until 5 a.m., instead of closing at 2 a.m., and allowing concealed weapons to be carried in bars and banks and on school grounds.
During her first term as mayor, she signed an administrative order that permitted the open carrying of weapons in the town library and in city hall.
Just so it’s clear: Sarah has been talking her gunslinger’s talk and walking her gunslinger’s walk right from the start.
Posted in Joe McGinniss, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue, Wasilla | Tags: creedence clearwater, Giffords, guns, mass murder, norway, tucson, utoya, who'll stop the rain | 42 Comments »
Palin Family Friend Jeremy “The Rat” Morlock Starts Squealing on Buddies to Save His Own Ass
July 22, 2011
That’s Wasilla’s own Jeremy Morlock holding the firearm, gleefully celebrating the murder of yet another unarmed Afghan civilian.
Jeremy got out of his prison cell yesterday to rat his brains out (not that he has many) as part of his weaselly deal to serve only seven years in military prison before returning to Wasilla to be Grand Marshall of the Fourth of July parade in 2018.
After all, he only murdered darkies, and they’re not real people anyway.
You think Wasilla won’t welcome The Rat home?
Before he went on his murder spree in Afghanistan, he’d already been charged with assault against his wife.
Maybe because she’d told him she didn’t want to go to bed with him at just the moment he threw a beer glass at her and pressed a lit cigarette against her chest?
In that case, he’d only been acting as a good Christian, according to the “thinking” expressed in a column published in the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.
Yes, Sarah’s hometown paper–the same one that said last summer that Todd or Sarah would be justified in killing me if, as a neighbor, I’d ever stepped across their property line (not that I even fired a shot over Todd’s head when he came barging into my yard to try to scare me off)–has just printed a column in defense of spousal rape.
As Amanda Coyne notes in the Alaska Dispatch, the columnist writes:
The truth is that God has given to us physical needs we commonly refer to as a “sex drive,” and he has designed for these to be met within the bounds of marriage. The trouble comes when one spouse or the other decides to exact retaliation against the other because of some offense and withholds him or herself from his or her mate. This is wickedness, and such is a violation of the spirit of marriage on the part of the withholder. Thus, if these allegations of spousal rape are due to the wife withholding herself in attempt to control or punish her husband, she is out of line with God. And it doesn’t matter how many laws are passed, it will just be another reason why God will not bless America.
So the recession is all your fault, ladies, because you don’t put out for your drunken, violent husbands, who are merely acting upon the “sex drive” that God gave them. If only you’d lie back and think of the Queen, God would bless America again, and unemployment, high health care costs, and all other social ills would disappear.
Except maybe for Palin family friend, Jeremy “The Rat” Morlock.
The Problem Sarah Can’t Solve: Sarah Palin
July 16, 2011
She speaks with forked tongue.
And she can’t keep herself from stepping on both forks.
Consider just recently:
–her comments after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was almost assassinated in Arizona.
–her idiotic bus tour, which culminated in her astonishingly ignorant remarks about Paul Revere.
–her insistence that she had been right about Paul Revere: yes, really, he was shooting his gun and ringing his bell to warn the British that the Americans were coming!
–her embarrassing cancellation of the rest of the bus tour.
–her insistence that she had not cancelled the bus tour.
–her cancellation of her trip to Sudan because of nonexistent “jury duty.”
–her support for the hugely embarrassing movie about herself. “The Undefeated” could be the worst movie ever made about a politician, which is fitting, because she could be the worst political figure ever to etch her way into the national consciousness. Only fitting that it was made by a guy who made his money at Goldman Sachs, ripping off real Americans while he enriched himself. And they have the gall to call themselves populists!
The list could go on, and Sarah herself will assure that it does.
It also goes way back in time. Trust me, Sarah’s history of stepping all over her forked tongue all her life is documented in THE ROGUE.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard her voice. I was considering a new book about Alaska, a sequel to GOING TO EXTREMES. I heard that Alaska had a woman governor. That intrigued me. I googled her. Then I youtubed her. Fifteen seconds after first hearing her voice, I knew she wasn’t somebody I wanted to write about.
Then McCain chose her as his running mate. Which meant that this blithering idiot came close to holding a national office that could have been the Presidency.
And so I felt I had to write about her.
I still tremble when I think about that. Do any of you realize how close we came to the destruction of the United States of America, and its replacement by the Christian States of America? For those of you who believe in him, thank God for Barack Obama. May we never have to learn what he saved us from.
Every day for the rest of our lives every one of us should let John McCain know what a traitor he was to the country he once served so bravely.
Meanwhile, Sarah lives on as a national political figure, enabled by the very mainstream media that ridicules her.
Breathlessly, the Beltway Bunch awaits her decision…
Sarah has already laughed all the way to the bank.
Now she may swoop in again and try to steal our country and present it to her cult–the Christian Dominionists, whose top priority is to destroy separation of church and state.
Sarah tried that in Wasilla. It didn’t work. That doesn’t mean she’s not planning to try it again, on a much larger scale.
With every word her forked tongue allows her to utter, she tries to play down her ties to Evangelistic Extremism, but in her heart she knows they’re right.
Actually, God is getting the last laugh here.
Because with every word she utters in live time (and this excludes her ghost-written Facebook posts), she trips all over the tongue God gave her but forgot to tell her how to use.
In THE ROGUE, I write about my visit to John Stein, the man Sarah unseated as mayor of Wasilla in 1996.
You can read about Stein’s integrity and honesty and self-effacing sense of humor in the book, but I’ll include this brief exchange with him here to give you a sense:
“My question about Sarah,” he says, “is if God wants her to be president, why didn’t God equip her with education enough to have at least basic knowledge of geography, science and social systems?”
“You mean so she wouldn’t say she could see Russia from her house?”
“She never said that,” he says, smiling. “She said she could see rush hour.”
Posted in 2012, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Obama, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue, Wasilla | Tags: forked tongue, gabrielle giffords, ignorance, john mccain, john stein, paul revere, serpents | 84 Comments »
No, we’re not invited…
July 14, 2011
Even so, we can all wish Sarah’s parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, a Happy 50th Anniversary on July 30.
Posted in Chuck Heath, Joe McGinniss, Sarah Palin, The Rogue, Wasilla | Tags: Linda Menard | 78 Comments »
Bachmann Overdrive Leaves Sarah in Dust UPDATE:// UK bookies say Bachmann twice as likely as Palin to win 2012
July 5, 2011
As The New York Times reports, Michele Bachmann electrified a July Fourth crowd in Clear Lake, Iowa yesterday.
The excitement surrounding Mrs. Bachmann rivaled the attention paid to most candidates in recent years, including in 2007 when Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived with her husband in tow…One week after Mrs. Bachmann declared her candidacy in Iowa, where she lived until age 12, her campaign has swept through New Hampshire and South Carolina, drawing bigger crowds than any of her Republican rivals.
A year ago, I’m sure Sarah Palin supporters would have envisioned the exact same scene, but with Sarah as the center of attention.
It was not to be. All Sarah could muster for the holiday was a typically stale, banal tweet:
“Let Freedom Ring! Happy Independence Day… thank God for America, thank God for our troops.”
Sarah may still be asking herself, “To be or not to be?” but the answer matters less with each passing day.
The GOP circus train has moved on, leaving Sarah stranded at the Wasilla depot with nobody even caring any more.
UPDATE: The UK betting agency, William Hill, which is seeking approval to take presidential bets in Las Vegas next year, has posted their current odds on the 2012 race. Why is the chart below a valuable guide to what’s actually likely to happen, as opposed to what partisans hope for? Because William Hill couldn’t care less who wins. As long as they adjust their odds to stay ahead of the curve, they make their profit regardless of the outcome. Thus, their take on 2012 is something hard to find in U.S. media and on blogs: expert and dispassionate.
William Hill odds don’t differ significantly from those recently offered by Ladbrokes, which I posted here, but they are more current.
Take a look:
| Next US President
|
|
|---|---|
|
4/9
Barack Obama
|
6/1
Mitt Romney
|
|
8/1
Tim Pawlenty
|
12/1
Rick Perry
|
|
14/1
Michele Bachmann
|
18/1
Jon Huntsman
|
|
28/1
Sarah Palin
|
40/1
Ron Paul
|
|
40/1
Marco Rubio
|
50/1
Hilary Clinton
|
|
50/1
Joe Biden
|
50/1
Rudy Giuliani
|
|
50/1
Rick Santorum
|
50/1
Herman Cain
|
|
66/1
Newt Gingrich
|
100/1
Jeb Bush
|
|
500/1
Randall Terry
|
|
Bachmann at 14/1 offers only half the reward that a bet on Sarah at 28/1 would return–the surest sign yet that God has grown tired of holding open the door.
Of course, Obama at 4/9 suggests that a bet on any Republican would be putting “trickle-up” economics into action (i.e. your money will trickle up into William Hill’s already bloated coffers.)
p.s. William Hill offering 9/4 on Brazil to win the Copa America (South American championship) currently being played in Argentina. Having watched all first-round matches (Univision/Telefutura have great HD broadcasts) I’m tempted…also tempted by the 10/1 currently offered on Brazil’s Pato to wind up as individual high scorer.
But not at all tempted by 28-1 on Sarah What’s-her-name.
FULL DISCLOSURE: In 1999, The Miracle of Castel di Sangro was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. In the end, the award went to a bedridden “septuagenarian knight” for his social history of English cricket. I congratulated Sir Derek by telephone soon after the presentation. He was utterly charming and I’m glad his final days were brightened by the award.
Anyway, how’s a Yank named Joe gonna beat out a septuagenarian knight for a London book prize?
The William Hill people made the awards ceremony a splendid event, and as second prize I received a £750 credit to the new wagering account they established for me. No need to tell you how long it took me to run through that!
Posted in 2012, Joe McGinniss, michelle bachmann, right wing, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue, Wasilla | Tags: 2012 gop candidates, bachman turner overdrive, brazil, circus, copa america, cricket, iowa primary, July 4th, london, new hampshire, pato, sarah palin 2012 campaign, south carolina, telefutura, train station, univision, william hill | 42 Comments »
Meet the new Sarah Palin: Nikki Haley of South Carolina
July 3, 2011
As Sarah’s free-fall into political irrelevance accelerates, Bachmann has already replaced her as the right-wing Republican woman who might matter in 2012. But it’s Nikki Haley (pictured with Sarah above) who threatens to erase all memories of the Wasilla Weirdo.
[By the way, thanks to commenters and others who worry that nobody will care about THE ROGUE when it is published on September 20. Worry not. My publisher, Crown, is not concerned. In fact, the people at Crown are wildly excited about the book’s prospects, and growing more so every day. THE ROGUE contains enough startling new revelations–as well as my first-person account of what it was like to live next to Sarah last summer–to assure the sort of national interest that previous books about Sarah did not achieve. Major national media attention is already guaranteed, although I’m not permitted yet to get specific.]
But think longer term: Bachmann will burn out this year and next because she’s just as dopey and as enslaved to Dominionist Christianty as is Sarah.
Obama should be so lucky as to have Bachmann as his 2012 opponent. (No, he couldn’t possibly be so lucky as to have Sarah to wipe up the floor with next year: if he did, he might win all fifty states.)
No matter who it is, he’ll be reelected. Yes, you heard it here first. No matter how short the odds, bet Obama in 2012.
Current odds from Ladbrokes in the UK:
Barack Obama
1/2
Mitt Romney
5/1
Tim Pawlenty
12/1
Rick Perry
14/1
Jon Huntsman
20/1
Michele Bachmann
20/1
Sarah Palin
33/1
Rudy Giuliani
50/1
Herman Cain
50/1
Ron Paul
66/1
Newt Gingrich
66/1
Rick Santorum
150/1
Gary Johnson
150/1
Thaddeus McCotter
150/1
If you bet $1,000 on Obama to be reelected, you’d receive $1,500 the day after election day, 2012.
That’s a fifty percent return on your money in sixteen months.
I personally, of course, do not endorse wagering in any form.
Nonetheless, you might be interested in Ladbrokes’ take on the GOP nomination:
Mitt Romney
11/8
Tim Pawlenty
4/1
Rick Perry
5/1
Michele Bachmann
7/1
Jon Huntsman
10/1
Sarah Palin
14/1
Rudy Giuliani
25/1
Herman Cain
25/1
Newt Gingrich
33/1
Ron Paul
40/1
Rick Santorum
66/1
Gary Johnson
66/1
Thaddeus McCotter
66/1
Rick Perry, who hasn’t even said he’ll run, is 5/1, while Sarah, slipping fast, is 14/1 for the nomination.
But let’s look beyond the easy money Ladbrokes is putting on the table. Let’s look to 2016, by which time Sarah will be only that bad taste you might burp up if you ate too much pizza last night.
The GOP/Tea Party/hot chick meme will still be out there. There will be no incumbent President.
Beware Nikki Haley of South Carolina. The New York Times has just anointed her as the future of the Tea Party here.
And the Haley piece was written by Kim Severson, formerly of the Anchorage Daily News.
So she knows how this stuff can happen.
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY TO ALL WHO READ THIS BLOG AND COMMENT ON IT, AND ALSO TO ALL OF OUR TROOPS SERVING OUR NATION, BOTH HERE AND ABROAD, AND ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WOMEN AND MEN WHOSE LIVES ARE IN DANGER AS THEY SERVE IN WAR ZONES.
It’s not only Sarah Palin who cares about you.
“The Oft-Defeated”: Dishonesty in Palin Propaganda Film Starts with Title
June 25, 2011
The movie about herself that Sarah will travel to Iowa to watch on Tuesday–unless she cancels her trip–is called “The Undefeated.”
How could a serious person, even a serious conservative, use that title for a movie about Sarah?
She was defeated, most famously, in her run for vice president in 2008.
Prior to that, she was defeated in her run for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002.
Those are two defeats in tries for elective office.
But Sarah’s history of defeat is much more extensive.
She was defeated in the Miss Alaska pageant.
She was defeated in four different attempts to graduate from college before she finally managed it at University of Idaho.
She was defeated in her attempt to get a creationist majority elected to the Wasilla School Board in the early 1990’s.
She was defeated in her attempt to have abortion banned at the Mat-Su Valley hospital.
Before her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated when she applied for a position as dispatcher with the Palmer, Alaska, police department and was not hired.
After her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to appoint Alaska Independence Party and John Birch Society member Steve Stoll to the city council.
As mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons in 1997, a move that nearly led to her recall.
As mayor, she was also defeated in the courts when she tried to build a new sports arena on land the city did not own—a defeat for which Wasilla is still paying.
She was defeated in her first attempt to hold down an appointed job, when she had to bail from her post on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2004, due to her inability to grasp the complexities of the commission’s work.
Mike Miller, the ultra-right wing candidate she supported against Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the 2004 GOP primary for U.S. Senate, was defeated.
As governor of Alaska, she was defeated in her attempt to have her ex-brother in law Mike Wooten fired from the state police.
Also as governor, she was defeated in her attempt to require teenagers to obtain parental consent for abortions.
Also as governor she was defeated in her attempt to have the state pay the expenses involved in her bringing her children with her on political trips, and her image suffered an even greater defeat when it was disclosed that she’d been billing state taxpayers a per diem charge for the more than three hundred days she spent at her Wasilla home while serving as governor.
Her reputation as an ethical reformer suffered another defeat when a state-appointed investigator found that she’d abused the power of her office in her attempt to have Wooten fired.
In 2009, she was defeated in her attempt to install her former personal attorney, Wayne Anthony Ross, as Alaska attorney general.
Subsequent to her resignation, it’s become clear that her strongest initiative as governor–the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA)–has proven a costly failure.
And last summer Sarah was defeated in her attempt to bully me into vacating the premises I’d rented next door to her on Lake Lucille.
Not to mention how many Tea Party candidates she supported last fall were defeated. (Anybody remember Christine O’Donnell? How about Joe Miller, in her own (former) state of Alaska?)
How many defeats is that?
More than enough to make an utter mockery of the title of the hagiographic propaganda film that she hopes–and no doubt prays–will pull her national political career out of its terminal free-fall.
Posted in Breitbart, Joe McGinniss, Mike Wooten, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue, Uncategorized, Walt Monegan, Wasilla | Tags: abortion, abuse of power, alaska, lies iowa agia, palin movie, the undefeated | 112 Comments »
