The return of Shailey Tripp.

This was posted on Shailey's blog Wednesday:

For over a month now I have wanted to address the issue of my arrest paperwork and the Anchorage Police Department’s official statement to the National Enquirer regarding the article from the NE on the subject matter that I was Todd Palin’s mistress/prostitute. Specifically I want to go into detail about each point they made in their statement.

The Shailey proceeds to do exactly that.


There is much more happening behind the scenes which must stay behind the scenes for now.  But trust me, just as soon as all of the loose ends are tied up we will be hearing MUCH more from Shailey.


Should be very explosive indeed.

Clearly Rupert Murdoch is in a panic and desperately trying to control the damage before it spreads too far to contain. But will it be enough?

From Yahoo News:

Rupert Murdoch apologized to victims of criminal phone hacking by one of his tabloids and accepted the resignations of News Corp's top two newspaper executives, Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton.

Moving to gain control of a scandal washing over his global business, the U.S.-based magnate made a personal apology to the parents of a murdered schoolgirl in what appeared to be an admission that the News of the World, then edited by Brooks and overseen by Hinton, had in 2002 hacked into the voicemails of their missing daughter.

It was that damning allegation, in a rival newspaper 10 days ago, which reignited a 5-year-old scandal that has forced Murdoch to close the News of the World, Britain's best-selling Sunday paper, and drop a $12 billion plan to buy full control of highly profitable pay-TV operator BSkyB.

The crisis has broken the grip that Murdoch, 80, had over British politics for three decades as leaders from Margaret Thatcher, through Labor's Tony Blair to current Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron sought his support.

It has also forced him to make concessions to public calls that the executives who were in charge at the time of the scandal be held accountable.

Somebody left a comment on another thread that I should not get my hopes up about this scandal damaging Fox News, or destroying their credibility along with the other News Corp entities.

Yeah maybe not, but this has been a pretty satisfying summer so far, so I think I will follow my President's advice and embrace the audacity of hope.

How about you guys?

Keith Olbermann reveals the tactics that Rupert Murdoch uses to keep his employees in line.

 My favorite part comes toward the end.

 "And when the tide recedes there will be nothing left. Not of News Corp, not of Fox News, not of Rupert Murdoch."

See? Even Keith Olbermann believes that it is possible THIS will be the end of Murdoch.

Maybe this is like in a "Peter Pan" play.

If all of us believe and clap hard enough, instead of bringing Tinkerbell back to life, we can wish for the demise of Fox News. And it will happen.

Worth a shot.

(H/T to Politicususa.)

The hero who first reported on the News Corp phone hacking scandal was actor Hugh Grant?

You have to watch this exchange between Grant and ex-NOW reporter Paul McMullen to believe it. Grant essentially destroys this guy's credibility with ease.

Well now I am a little less embarrassed about owning "Love Actually" and having memorized several scenes from "Notting Hill." (Okay, that second one I still find embarrassing.)

Anthony Weiner resigns!

From the Guardian:

Twenty days after the scandal dubbed "Weinergate" erupted with the sending of a sexually suggestive photograph on Twitter, a rising star of the Democrats was forced to resign his congressional seat in the face of pressure from the highest levels of his party.

From having been ranked as a possible future Democratic leader and the frontrunner to become New York mayor in 2013, Anthony Weiner's fall from grace is spectacular and close to complete. He has spent his entire adult life in politics, having been elected in 1991 as the youngest councillor to serve in New York city then aged 27.

True to his character as an abrasive and at times antagonistic politician, Weiner, now 46, at first tried to lie his way out of the sex scandal he had provoked by sending lewd photographs of himself to several different women. When the rightwing blogger Andrew Breitbart revealed his actions on 28 May, Weiner initially claimed his Twitter account had been hacked into, later changing his story to say he wasn't sure whether the images of a semi-naked man were of him.

After further revelations emerged virtually every day of his sexually charged interactions, he went in front of the cameras on 6 June to admit that he had been involved through cyberspace with at least six different women. But even then he refused to stand down from his New York seat.

Weiner's resignation was made on the day that party leaders had been preparing to strip him of his powerful positions on congressional committees — a move which would have further humiliated and weakened him.

The official line taken by party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic chief in the House of Representatives who has called on him to resign, was that the scandal was distracting attention from important political debates such as the economy.

I just watched this on CNN. 

It was pretty sad even though I have been one of those saying that he had to make this choice all along.

There was some asshole in the audience yelling out insulting questions, that I assume is one of Howard Stern's douchebags.  That was uncalled for in my opinion, and I would have hoped that Weiner could at least have been given some respect on the day that he did what he needed to do for his party, for his family, and for his country.

Okay can we finally agree that Anthony Weiner should resign now?

Twit pic taken at House members gym

Courtesy of the New York Daily News:

TMZ published a new slew of squirm-inducing self-portraits, including several full-body shots taken in the House gym - some clothed, some not.

Several show Weiner showing off his naked body holding only his camera and his privates.

Another source close to Weiner said the congressman was surprised it took two weeks for the gym photos to surface.

Weiner shrugged off calls from top Democrats - including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz - worrying more about what his rank and file colleagues think, a source said.

The source said one person Weiner would listen to is his mentor, Sen. Chuck Schumer. Schumer says he is "heartbroken" but has stopped short of telling Weiner to quit.

The other person Weiner will take advice from - his wife, Huma Abedin - is in Africa with her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Weiner is still convinced Abedin won't divorce him, and is still telling people she wants him to stay in Congress, sources said.

The lusty lawmaker is afraid of what Clinton, who has some experience with misbehaving husbands, may be whispering to Abedin, the source said.

The last two weeks have taken a toll on the congressman, who isn't sleeping and spends hours pacing his apartment, friends said.

Look I am a good progressive, I know that it is unfair that David Vitter gets to nail prostitutes and keep his Senate seat, I get all of that.  But come on!

How is this helping the Democrats remain credible when it comes to calling out Republicans on their hypocrisy? 

In my opinion there is NO way for Weiner to survive this, and as much as I may personally hate it, he simply has to respond to the calls for his resignation and take one for the team.

We have too much to do, and this is an enormous distraction.

Laura Novak revisits my "Tale of Two Babies" post.

Laura bravely wades into perhaps the most controversial story I have ever posted on IM, and discusses the strange "Trig Palin" ear malformation with her friend the neonatologist.

From Laura's blog:

LN: You mentioned the “ear.” Perhaps nothing rocked the Palin-watching blogosphere quite like Gryphen’s Tale of Two Babies post in February of last year.

His discovery of Trig as a newborn with a deformed ear was stunning. I believe this is a tight shot from this photo at the baby shower (same occasion as the right hand photo above.)

And as Gryphen pointed out, the deformed ear is also visible close-up on the Sadie-in-the-kitchen photo.

But the discovery but it led to further speculation that the infant with a cauliflower ear could not possibly be the same baby presented to the world at the Republican National Convention and then later at the presidential debate.

In fact, following that amazing post, the Internet began collectively calling the baby, Ruffles. What’s your initial response?

DOC: I'm not sure what I can add to that excellent Gryphen post other than agree with the general principle that the “ruffled ear” is unlikely to ever look normal.

At first glance, I thought the hole in front of the ear was a preauricular pit which occurs in up to 1% of newborns. It's not particularly associated with Down syndrome and usually doesn't cause any serious problems, besides getting infected.

But then I looked at a close-up of the ear and thought that the hole in front of the ear may actually be the ear canal itself, because it's way too big to be a preauricular pit, which are tiny. What I don’t see is any evidence of a “tragus”. That’s the piece of cartilage that sits in front of the ear canal opening, partially covering it.

LN: I know that you and I both want to delve further into this, but for now, you agree with the assessment of the doctors Gryphen interviewed?

DOC: Yes. There's no way that these small, low set, posteriorly rotated and deformed ears in picture #1 could look relatively normal several months later. But I’m not an ENT and I’d really like to hear what one would say before I’d definitively call these different babies.

My first response to this VERY complimentary article is, "Aww shucks, tweren't nothing."

However my second response is to say thank you Laura, and thank your doctor friend too, for being courageous enough to give this bizarre twist in Sarah Palin's crazy pregnancy and birth story another look.

I have to say that it took me over ten months to determine that I had done enough preparation, and had enough evidence, to present this story.  And EVEN THEN I had to be convinced that it could withstand the scrutiny which we all knew would come once it was posted.

I had hoped that once it was out it would catch fire and have a real impact on the pregnancy story.

But other than the duo "coincidences" of Todd Palin dropping out of the Iron Dog the day the story broke, and Meg Stapleton SUDDENLY quitting as Palin's spokesperson two days later, there really wasn't that much of a response.    But hey, those two incidences don't MEAN anything, now do they?

I had high hopes that Andrew Sullivan might take the ball and run with it, but he was just never sure enough about the subject to take that risk.  I have to say I really could not blame him, it really IS one of the craziest aspects to the whole babygate mess.

So once again I want to thank Laura Novak for looking at this story again with fresh eyes, because even thought I have every confidence that whoever looks at this evidence will reach essentially the same conclusion that I reached, it is nice to have that validated by other people trained to look at evidence with a skeptic's eye.

And before I end this post I should add that we had tried repeatedly to find NEW pictures of "ruffled ear" baby in order to do follow up posts, and were unable to do so.

That is until today.

THIS picture is from Frank Bailey's book, Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin.

Notice anything?

Now the only thing new that we can learn from these pictures is that, since they were taken sometime in May, Palin continued to present THIS baby as Trig at least few more times in public.

It is also my opinion that, since the baby in this picture appears plumper than in the previous photographs, that this was probably a few weeks after the pictures taken at the baby shower and in Palin's kitchen. 

So then the million dollar question remains.  Just when DID Sarah swap the baby pictured above....

....for THIS baby?

The authors of "Babygate" book need your help.

One of the questions that I have been asked more times than any other is "Gryphen, WHY don't you just tell everything that you know and finish this woman?"

I often wonder just who would ask such a thing?

Do they REALLY believe that if I were to write some long drawn out post on this blog laying out all of the rumors, gossip, and first hand accounts I had heard, with NOBODY willing to come forward and confirm them, that it would have any real affect?

Because it wouldn't. And I have always secretly believed that many of the people who ask me to do that, are actually Palin-bots who are attempting to trick me into divulging some source so that they can then scare them away or buy them off, thereby protecting their Queen from a potentially devastating scandal.

So instead I have been working quietly behind the scenes to move that information, and those sources, into the hands of authors and journalists with larger audiences and, let's face it, more credibility.

You have started to see the result of all of that hard work already.  But there is still much, much more to come.

And one of those projects is an actual book on the topic of Babygate itself. I hinted at this back at the beginning of this month. (Sometime after that hint there was talk of another book on babygate being written, but there is NO connection to this project and I know nothing about that book. And neither do any of my author friends or journalistic sources.)

Up until today I was keeping the project under my hat until it had moved to a place that we felt it was safe to discuss openly.  So right now I can tell you that it is nearing completion and will be ready for publication in the near future.

The book is being painstakingly researched and they have ALREADY uncovered some heretofore unknown bits of information that will, hopefully, make this the definitive book on the subject, and force the mainstream media to finally give this story the attention it has so long deserved.

I can tell you that some of our favorite babygate bloggers, and researchers from the past, have been contacted and will contribute to this book, as well as some sources with important information who have refused to come forward up until this point.

You should also know that the main writer on this book is an established best selling author with a reputation to protect, so this will NOT be some clumsily thrown together paperback, with scandalous accusations and no facts to back it up.  This will be a well researched, and well documented, journalistic endeavor that should be VERY convincing even to the most stubborn faked pregnancy denier.

So this is where YOU come in.

As it turns out the book is coming along just fine, but for some reason the sticking point has been coming up with the title.  So the authors have asked me to start a little contest here on IM to help come up with the BEST possible title for this book.

So if you would be so kind, I would appreciate it if you could put on your thinking caps and come up with a title that will be provocative enough to draw attention to the book, but not so silly as to make it seem unserious.

I will then take the best choices and put them up in a poll in the next few days and we can then vote on them.

I CANNOT actually promise that the one which receives the most votes will end up as the title, but you never know. And besides how much fun would it be if you were able to walk into your local bookstore and see the book with the title YOU came up with sitting on the New Arrivals shelf?

I have long said that getting the truth out about Sarah Palin would be a community effort, and so it feels right to involve all of you as much as possible as we put those final nails into her political coffin.

I know I speak for ALL of the people who have worked so hard to bring the truth to the public about this dangerous lunatic, that we could NOT have done it without your contributions and energetic support.

So thank you my friends, and as you start your long Memorial Day weekend know this.....Sarah Palin hates you!

Namaste, you Trig Truthers you, namaste.

A big Palin scandal brewing?

According to Palingates and Alaska WTF there is going to be something major going down concerning Sarah in the near future.  Being from the lower 48 I have no idea what it is but if someone would clue me in , I would appreciate it.

I have to admit I am sick of waiting.  The anti-Palin websites have been teasing us for over two years with these scandals, from Babygate to a Palin divorce.  Just release the info and be done with it!