Category: Sarah Palin

Dave Weigel, Joe McGinniss, Jesse Griffin and the Palin-Hater Next Door

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I consider David Weigel a friend, and have often praised him as one of the best young reporters in Washington. But Weigel’s “See-No-Evil” attitude toward Joe McGinniss, who moved in next door to the Palin family to work on his anti-Palin book, seems absurdly naive.

While you can’t fault a journalist for associating with potential sources, a commenter in a previous post called my attention to something strange — perhaps the better word would be “skeezy” or “hinky” — about Joe McGinniss.

Remember Jesse Griffin, who masqueraded behind the “Gryphen” pseudonym as a vicious anti-Palin blogger and Trig-Truther? And remember how he lost his job at an Alaska elementary school after his identity was revealed and school officials learned how he’d been promoting pornography and masturbation on his blog (extreme language warning) while being paid by taxpayers to supervise young children?

Well, guess what? Joe McGinnis is a “huge fan” of Jesse Griffin, as confirmed by none other than . . . Jesse Griffin:

I found the table that our host Phil Munger had reserved for us and sat down with some of his other guests, who I did not know, but who turned out to be fans of both IM and Mudflats. (Oh did I mention that AKM was with me?)
Soon I was introduced to author Joe McGinniss, who is up here researching HIS Sarah Palin book, and who also turned out to be a huge fan of both AKM’s and I. (I swear I will NEVER get used to hearing that.)
— Jesse Griffin, a/k/a “Gryphen,” October 3, 2009

In case you didn’t get the reference, “IM” is Jesse’s “Immoral Minority” blog where he described his ironclad certainty that Sarah Palin’s fifth child “was not conceived in her uterus,” declared how much fun it is to “wank off” to amateur porn, advised youngsters that “your penis will respond more readily” if you practice by “watching porn on your computer.” and told the world that “it brings me joy to work with these children.”

You betcha!

When this porn-blogging Trig-Truther obsessive Palin-hater was forced to resign from Trailside Elementary School in Anchorage  in August 2009, it wasn’t exactly a secret. so why — two months later, in October 2009 — was Joe McGinniss raving about being a “huge fan” of Jesse Griffin’s Immoral Minority blog? Why is McGinniss laughing it up with Griffin at the “celebrity table” all night?

And why doesn’t it bother Dave Weigel that McGinniss is such a “huge fan” of a vile joke like Jesse Griffin and the obnoxious gadfly “AKM” (Jeanne Devon)?

Nikki Haley Is Now Nationally Famous for Not — Not — Having Sex With a Blogger

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Hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned:

State ethics filings available online indicate that Haley’s campaign for State Senate paid Will Folks’s company, Viewpolitik, a bit more than $1,100 in consulting fees for the months of January and February of that year, along with a reimbursement of $173.50. . . .
South Carolina Republicans said he’s paid by a number of Republican candidates, though often listed as a subcontractor because he is a controversial figure.

So maybe his motive for saying he got some action from the candidate was that he wasn’t getting any financial action this time around?

I’ve heard of consultants getting screwed by campaigns, but . . .

UPDATE: This is my second post on this story, but the first post was getting too long, and now the story’s developing rapidly. Ben Domenech was also on the story early and updates:

Columbia’s alternative paper reports that rumors originally surfaced over a year ago. That would square with what I’m told — it’d be around the time Folks got pushed off Haley’s payroll after some minor consultant work — but this is all still hearsay. Haley’s denial remains unequivocal.

UPDATE II:  Michael Brendan Dougherty says we’re underestimating the Will-Meister:

I happen to know that Will Folks is a bit of a ladies man. He is very funny, extremely capable, and a raconteur. From what I hear, Folks is rumored to have had “physical relationships” with nearly every female consultant in the state. His affair with Haley supposedly began after he had done some writing work for her.

Well, everybody knows Republican political consultants are notorious whores, but . . .

UPDATE III: The point of the headline, in case you don’t get it, is that it would be unusual if Haley did have sex with a blogger. As a rule, we bloggers spend all our time staring at our SiteMeters and begging Instapundit for linkage, so we don’t have much time for l’amour. 

Evidently the Will-Meister has found a way around that. Maybe they should get him to present a seminar at Right Online: “How to Run a Successful Blog and Also Get Jiggy With Every Female Consultant in the State.”

To analyze the scorned-consultant angle: The primary is June 8, and Folks isn’t getting paid by Haley this year. She just got endorsed by Sarah Palin, which means the money ought to be rolling in, so . . . Well, you do the math. Palin isn’t surprised:

Well, whaddya know? South Carolina’s conservative candidate, Nikki Haley, recently zipped to the front of the line in her state’s race for governor; and lo and behold, now accusations of an affair surface.

You betcha!

UPDATE IV: Add Dan Riehl to the list of bl0ggers that Nikki Haley never had sex with. You see how this could spiral out of control. Once word gets around that a chick dates bloggers . . .

UPDATE V: Ace of Spades also never had sex with Nikki Haley. However, Margaret Thatcher  . . .

UPDATE VI: Will Folks cites as his “smoking gun” (no pun intended) a report that the rumor was being pursued by a free weekly alternative tabloid in Columbia, S.C.

Full stop.

My head just exploded. You’re compelled to “admit” (brag, really) that you banged a politician because you were afraid one of those scrungy little weeklies with the transvestite-hooker ads in the back was going to write about a rumor?

Wait — this breaking news flash just in:

WILL FOLKS IS A CLUELESS DOUCHEBAG

EXPECT UPDATES . . .

From the Lone Star to Wasilla, With Love: The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You!

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Sarah Palin was featured in the Mother’s Day edition of USA Weekend, which included this photo of Piper Palin on a rocking horse:

This morning, I received an e-mail from Allen Nieschwietz of the Brenham (Texas) Banner-Press, who asked if I could help him verify a bit of local news. Mr. Nieschwietz said that a Brenham resident had seen the photo and come into the Banner-Press office to report that he had built that rocking horse and sent it to the Palin family as a gift.

Nieschwietz wanted to verify this fact and solicited my assistance. Always eager to help a small-town reporter, I forwarded his e-mail to a couple of my sources and one of them quickly replied:

Thanks, Stacy. We got in touch with him to confirm that it’s the same rocking horse.

So residents of Brenham, Texas, will soon be reading about this remarkable local story in the Banner-Press, but I hope Mr. Nieschwietz won’t mind my scoring an online exclusive here first. (Hey, I started at a 6,000-circulation weekly in 1986 and didn’t make it this far by missing out on scoops.)

As for Piper Palin’s rocking horse, let us hope she absorbs some of that courageous Lone Star spirit that earned Texans their famous praise:

“They have fought grandly, nobly,
and we must have more of them.”

(Cross-posted at the Hot Air Green Room.)

UPDATE: Josh Painter at Texas for Palin takes the genetic-determinist view of courage, and I try to avoid arguing with Texans, when possible.

If You Think Watching Keith Olbermann Is Painful, Imagine Being His Guest

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David Weigel had to defend Sarah Palin against Olby’s hallucinatory perjury-trap “Fitzmas” fantasies of a Palin perpwalk:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

After doing the Olbermann show, Weigel’s probably looking forward to talking to comparatively sane people at the Million Birther March.

We await the SPLC attack on Weigel as a libertarian sympthizer.

UPDATE: Predictably, the Trig Truthers are apoplectic at Weigel’s skepticism toward their kooky theories. Speaking of which, whatever happened to Trig-Truther Audrey and Trig-Truther “Gryphon”? Just askin’ questions . . .

The Most Important Sentence in Gabriel Sherman’s Sarah Palin Hit Piece

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“While careful not to say anything that might make her rear her head, some in the GOP Establishment whisper that they hope Palin stays in Wasilla. She may be useful in raising funds and drawing crowds, but Palin’s unseriousness and carnival antics damage the brand. ‘There’s a big piece of the Republican Party that doesn’t want her to run,’ said one national Republican strategist.”

Really, let’s cut to the chase here. Some of the details in the New York magazine article just confirm what I’ve previously noted, i.e., Palin’s inaccessibility to the press, her tendency to rely on a small number of close advisers, etc. But this kind of dishy “behind-the-scenes” feature story wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the willingness of GOP insiders to badmouth Palin behind her back. And being badmouthed constantly by anonymous Republicans only increases Palin’s defensiveness. Why should she trust anyone, when it seems there is an incessant stream of tattletales running to whisper damaging gossip to reporters?

UPDATE: A friend wonders why I said nothing about this part of Sherman’s story:

The only real blip concerned her ghostwriter, Lynn Vincent, a writer for the Evangelical World magazine, whom Palin chose from a short list of candidates presented to her by HarperCollins. After news of Vincent’s selection leaked, critics seized on a January 2009 pro-life piece she had written for World titled “Black Genocide” — as well as her association with the co-writer of her 2006 book Donkey Cons, former Washington Times writer Robert Stacy McCain (no relation), who had a history of racially charged statements and associations — to claim that Vincent was racist. Vincent, who had collaborated on a New York Times best seller about racial reconciliation, told me that she was deeply hurt by the racism allegation and considered suing the Daily Beast for a piece by writer Max Blumenthal headlined “Palin’s Noxious Ghostwriter.” But when the media shifted its focus to Palin’s next adventure, Vincent dropped the lawsuit idea.

The problem with suing for libel (and as a journalist, I thank God for this) is that under the Sullivan precedent, it’s almost impossible for a “public figure” to win a libel suit. Like politicians and entertainers, an author is more or less automatically a public figure, thus requiring proof of actual malice. And as opposed to, say, a false accusation of criminal behavior, the charge of “racism” is damnably hard to disprove, which is why it is slung around so frequently in political discourse.

So there was no percentage in Lynn suing the Daily Beast, besides which going to court over what was clearly a third-hand guilt-by-association smear wouldn’t help Palin — and helping Palin was what Lynn was hired to do, after all.

And shame on those people who keep spreading malicious rumors that Max Blumenthal was arrested in a raid on a so-called “ladyboy” brothel in Phuket!

UPDATE I: Ian Lazaran at Conservatives for Palin debunks a lot of Sherman’s article, which repeats several previously debunked memes.

UPDATE III: Allahpundit ho-hums:

Poor Dave Weigel was so bereft of juicy tidbits from the piece for his “Those Darned Wingnuts” beat at WaPo that he was forced to highlight the fact that she writes her own Facebook posts and how she fits into TLC’s programming strategy.

Yeah, Dave: Tell your bosses to rename it “Those Darn Wingnuts.”

Sarah Palin on Financial ‘Reform’

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From her Facebook page: 

The current debate over financial reform demonstrates what happens when political leaders react to a crisis with a raft of new regulations. First off, the people involved in writing government regulations are often lobbyists from the very industry that the new laws are supposed to regulate, and that’s been the case here. It should surprise no one that financial lobbyists are flocking to DC this week. Of course, the big players who can afford lobbyists work the regulations in their favor, while their smaller competitors are left out in the cold. The result here are regulations that institutionalize the “too big to fail” mentality.
Moreover, the financial reform bill gives regulators the power to pick winners and losers, institutionalizing their ability to decide “which firms to rescue or close, and which creditors to reward and how.” . . . The president is trying to convince us that he’s taking on the Wall Street “fat cats,” but firms like Goldman Sachs are happy with federal regulation . . .
 Goldman showered nearly a million dollars in campaign contributions on candidate Obama. In fact, J.P. Freire notes that President Obama received about seven times more money from Goldman than President Bush received from Enron. . . .

Read the whole thing. Notice that she links and name-checks my buddy J.P. Freire — a clever application of Rule 2. If this politics thing doesn’t work out for the Gov, she certainly shows promise as a blogger.

Kentucky Pro-Lifers Accuse Rand Paul of Faking His ‘100%’ Pro-Life Credentials

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Press release from Kentucky Right to Life:

In a recent fund raising letter from the Rand Paul U.S. Senate Campaign, Rand Paul claims that he “scored 100%” on the Kentucky Right to Life PAC pro-life survey.
Rand Paul filled out, signed and faxed the KRLA PAC survey to the KRLA PAC office on February 11th at 10:29 am. Rand Paul did not score 100% on the questionnaire.
This is one reason why Rand Paul was not eligible for the Kentucky Right to Life PAC Endorsement for the U.S. Senate seat.

KRL-PAC provides documentation that Paul omitted an answer to one of the questions on the survey. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports:

In a recent fund raising letter from the Rand Paul U.S. Senate Campaign, Rand Paul claims that he “scored 100%” on the Kentucky Right to Life PAC pro-life survey.
Kentucky Right to Life is the largest pro-life group in the state. In February, its PAC endorsed Secretary of State Trey Grayson of Boone County in the Republican U.S. Senate primary.
“Trey Grayson has always been 100 percent pro-life. He’s demonstrated it by being chairman of the board of the pro-life New Hope Center” in Crestview Hills, said PAC Treasurer Susan Kenney.
She said PAC had concerns with statements Paul has made about the morning-after pill and a claim that he “probably would” support a ban on partial birth abortion.

(Hat-tip: Lisa Graas.) Meanwhile, Sarah Palin appears in Paul’s new TV commercial:

And to be “fair and balanced,” here’s an ad for Paul’s GOP primary opponent, Trey Grayson:

KENTUCKY SENATE: KEY RACE ROUNDUP