The Flakiest Crust in the West

After experiencing the reflective retrospectives of Civil Rights, The Youth Movement, and Vietnam in the '60's, America stepped off the bus in Hollywood from Hayseed KS in 1970 and immediately walked off into the darkness with Mr. Sugar Daddy Pimp.

I have known a lot of flaky people throughout my life, but the so-called left-wing progressives of modern America have taken the pie crust to an all-new level! Just a few short years ago, I continually felt that this preconception must have just been the result of my misguided imagination, but early last year I learned that the pie in the sky was most definitely real. The Babygate phenomenon had taught me this cruel lesson. The right wing press didn't teach me this lesson; the flakes, con artists, and marks populating my own side of the political spectrum did.

Recent events made me laugh so hard that I nearly fell out of my chair! First Shailey Tripp says she is going to answer questions on her blog for the last time. Then she proceeds to not answer any questions of any significance. Then she removes all the comments from the post. Then she reinstates them. Her particular blogger pals claim to still vigorously support Shailey because only they are fully aware that she is doing the right thing by removing her blog. A few questions arise, but for the most part, only the crickets are chirping. Then the editor of Shailey's book posts in extravagant detail how she had personally given a copy of Boys Will Be Boys to a well-known, award-winning journalist with The New York Times. This blog post was celebrated with great delight by both the blogger and her readers. (Oh, Todd Palin will get his comeuppance now! Break out the orange jumpsuit in his size because this story is about to go viral!) The celebration lasted about three hours, until the word got out from Kathleen Baker precisely why Shailey Tripp had closed her blog. For the ridiculously low, low price of $14 a minute ($30 minimum per call) you, too, can converse directly with the ex-prostitute/masseuse who self-published two small books and now works for an ex-porn star! (Good job, Kathleen. The truth needed to be reported.) The celebratory blog post and its comments mysteriously disappeared! Within an hour, a short post was put in its place. Of course Kathleen's report, and the obvious truth of the whole mess, was not mentioned.

Let's review, shall we? According to the text of Boys Will Be Boys, Shailey Tripp was offered at least $100,000 for her story by The National Enquirer. The editors of the paper later rescinded this lucrative offer and reduced their proposition to an undisclosed amount, most likely a few thousand dollars. Months later Shailey Tripp attempted to auction off her e-mail collection one at a time in what turned out to be an uproarious late-night extravaganza of bidding that shocked even me! I cannot recall exactly what the final high bids were, but they were in the thousands for single messages of very short duration. The portions of the messages publicized for the bidders were of laughable insignificance. One can only hope that the actual full messages offered for sale in this overnight fiasco offered genuine material of value, but who knows at this point? The particularly flaky part is that not only did the bidding go into the stratosphere, but none of the bidders produced the cash after the auction was completed. Maybe one or more of the bidders made an after-hours deal on the side, but if so, I am not aware of it. So ends another flaky fiasco spawned by Babygate.

The next big money-making scheme hatched by Shailey Tripp was to self-publish her material. There is nothing at all wrong with that idea. She should have done that in the first place instead of slapping her credibility upside the head by initially involving herself with The Enquirer. Did her lawyer give her bad advice? I definitely think so. I personally provided Ms. Tripp with extensive advice about self-publishing. Did she heed this advice? Yes, except in issues in which my advice conflicted with Ms. Tripp's inflated view of herself and her desire to make as much money as easily as possible. She priced her CreateSpace book at the absolute maximum she thought she could get away with. $21.50 for 280 spacious pages of a self-published book on any subject except how to pick up girls (for boys) or how to have sex with vampires (for girls) is ludicrous. Anyone who has been around the block a few times in the current publishing climate knows this. It is also quite obvious that any book by an unknown author needs a Kindle version priced very low for that special Amazon market that absolutely dominates the sales of most any self-published book of recent years. Selling your Kindle, and other e-book formats for $18.95 only from the author's website utilizing PayPal is a patently absurd marketing strategy. Any book can be priced at $3-10 in the Kindle format and Amazon pays the author a 70% royalty, which is more than fair. Can you spell g-r-i-f-t-e-r?

Not only has Shailey Tripp obviously chosen a path not designed to bring the most readers to her book, therefore expanding the knowledge of her subject matter to large numbers of American voters, she has shut off the most cost-effective marketing tool available to any self-published author, a blog. Does anyone remember the temper tantrum she threw when she absurdly surmised that the Lifetime network had stolen her story when it produced a movie about a prostitute masseuse on the loose in Odessa TX in 2004? That was almost as absurd a rant as Dr. Brad Scharlott claiming that Trig Palin must be related to Trooper Wooten because a detailed photo analysis of their ears looked alike! Shailey Tripp is far from the only flake on this pie. She is just the most recent to expose her flaky crust in such sordid detail.

NIAFS is an equal-opportunity public service site. No punches are pulled and no one is immune to investigation just because he or she is apparently speaking from the left side of the political spectrum. Nothing has changed concerning my opinion of Shailey Tripp or her book, Boys Will Be Boys. I still think she is basically telling the truth about the most significant parts of her story. However, I have viewed her as one of the flakiest people I have ever encountered since I first learned of her story. What is shocking to me is not that she is a flake, but that she is far from alone among the Babygate bloggers in this respect. What is even more shocking is the degree to which most of the blog cult members continue to put up with this level of extreme flakiness.

Let me reiterate. There will be no Wild Ride published by Fred, at least not as a book successfully marketed nationally the way most of us would so desperately like to see. One of the following issues would promptly halt its commercial success dead in its tracks. First of all, Fred does not own the photos and e-mails you want to see published. Secondly, no one is going to believe that the real Fred is a person who has been consumed by the subject matter of Babygate or is qualified to discuss the topic. The third reason is that real authors do not publish ghostwritten books, and that is precisely the scam certain individuals are trying to pull. Lastly, even if the scam could be successfully launched, the media would uncover the obvious weaknesses in Fred's past in about five minutes with Google. Sean Hannity would personally go apeshit on the air as soon as he learned the identity of Fred's ghostwriter! If you think the right wing media trashed Joe McGinniss in a hurry, wait until they get a whiff of Fred and his pals!

Why is Paradigm Shift the only book that discusses Babygate in detail? I truly do not know. All I do know is that there are no flakes on Floyd. I arrived in California the first time crossing the border into Lake Tahoe on a motorcycle in 1971, and my progressive thought processes were in place long before that. America will never turn itself around in any significant, lasting manner until the left wing stops following flaky leaders. Until that point, we are all trapped being just Bozos on This Bus.

Low Price for a Limited Time

Amazon has recently dropped the price on the Kindle version of Paradigm Shift to $3.99. Who knows how long Amazon will keep it at this low price? Sometimes these price breaks last only a few days. Sometimes they go on for months. At more than 530 words per penny, this is truly the bargain of the century!

Diary of a Madman

The simplicity of innocence shines outward from this photo from a prom night long ago. I do not claim to know the actual origin of the evolution from this event in a galaxy far away, but we all know that somehow, somewhere, this is an ominous tale of innocence lost.

Although I have literally spent years researching and pondering this saga, I am still not certain of many issues that have possibly driven this young man from this pose with his future wife to the deviously controlling man described in Shailey Tripp's book, Boys Will Be Boys. Like any accomplished stealth hunter, Todd Palin has been particularly adept at covering his tracks. When I researched my book on the subject, I encountered stories ranging from one night stands to extended affairs to wife-swapping parties. I do agree with Ms. Tripp about one thing for certain: Todd loves and cares for his kids, even those who might not have emanated from his own genes, and some researchers think there are more than one child in that category. One such theory is that a few years after this blissful photo, Todd would marry someone not carrying his child, and if this is true, then maybe he knew and maybe he didn't. As with most of the ramifications of Babygate, only the insiders know the whole truth. Todd skated through Paradigm Shift because the focus of that book was not Todd or his progeny, and as I said, any tracks through illicit affairs have been obliterated by the wind.

Shailey Tripp tells a different story, one that complements my own book simply because the two share almost nothing in common. Shailey lived and breathed the same frigid air blowing out of Alaska. She has lived in Wasilla, Palmer, and Anchorage. She met Todd just before Sarah became Governor of Alaska and Todd became the shadow governor of that same state. Todd would soon become famous for his involvement with AIP and Troopergate while the Trig Truthers chased a plethora of baby stories. Can I say that Sarah was the first to have an affair, or was Todd, or can I even declare that any affair is a true story? No, I cannot. That is why my book discussed all the speculative rumors. Shailey tells a different story. She does not claim to know diddly squat about The Southern Strategy, the central focus of my book, even though she was born and raised in the South, and has lived there numerous times as an adult. In defense of this ignorance of an overbearing madness that infects people in that region of the country, she has not been politically motivated and she has lived in New Orleans, Atlanta, and Huntsville AL, three of the most progressive metro areas. Although these places may be literally surrounded by the madness of small towns and homogeneous, misguided attitudes, Shailey remained somewhat isolated from the infection. However, it is my impression that she has since learned a few things about such behaviors from the small towns of the Matsu Valley, particularly from an up close and personal encounter with Todd Palin and his good old boy buddies at local police departments.

Shailey's story lacks a paper trail to back up some of the information she has proffered. Now before you people who have already read Boys Will Be Boys and have wallowed in the scanned documents in the Appendix have a cow, allow me to explain. I think this might be the key to why the name Shailey Tripp has not already exploded all over the news. Remember how I stated that Todd has always covered his tracks? He is truly a master at it. Shailey describes his taking of every used condom and gene spurt into a Kleenex, putting it into his coat pocket and walking out with it. (Here is your cue, Miss Stephanie.) Eeewwww! Who does that? Only a man intent on avoiding any future DNA evidence, that's who. I cannot get too excited about Shailey's description of her prostitution bust. If the cops were putting the place under surveillance for two months after the neighbors complained, and then found fifty douche bottles in the restroom and rubbers in the dumpster, I can understand how they felt they were just doing their job. People all over prudish America tend to get upset when someone else's sexual behavior becomes a little too public. Do I think Shailey is telling the truth about most of her accusations toward Todd? Yes. Do I think Todd did an outstanding job of deleting any paper trails and conning a mark into doing his bidding? Also yes. Did the police have the evidence of Todd's involvement right under their noses and ignore it? Probably. Was there enough documented evidence that would make The National Enquirer feel safe enough from litigation? Probably not. Shailey paints a negative picture of Alan Butterfield, her contact at The Enquirer. Has her viewpoint probably been tainted, at least to some degree, by anger, betrayal, or greed? Although both Mr. Butterfield and his employer may be the horse's butts of the universe, and they most likely are, we can never be totally certain of that, can we? Everything hinges on the words of Shailey Tripp. She was had; she was conned by a master.

Shailey claims that Todd tried to rope her into joining a sort of corporate, interstate prostitution operation. On this point, I think the emails in her book validate the story. Of course I do not think either Todd or Shailey arrived at this level of illicit behavior without the previous stories being true, too, and there's the secret and the curse. Everything I have encountered over the past four years with the name Palin on it seems to be coated in this sort of salacious Teflon. Although the FBI would not have participated in the condom and douche bottle raid if interstate activities had not been at least suspected, the paperwork with the name Todd Palin on it seems to have evaporated. All The Palins had to do was sic their lawyer on the case with a statement that Todd Palin's name was not discovered on paper anywhere in the raid. Of course Shailey claims that the most damning evidence was digital, and I have little doubt that that is true. The problem is the same as always. The MSM refuses to chase videos and still photos of sevelte Sarah in early 2008, so therefore the CNP, Fox News, CNN, and the Republican power brokers skate like the wind. In this case, Todd skates away from the Alaskan iceberg, so Greg West rolls quietly away from the approaching potential FBI storm in Atlanta. The cover story is that if you cannot prove the little story, how are you going to prove the big one? Like I said, it is just the cover story.

Certain details of the backstory behind the release of Boys Will Be Boys need to be mentioned. In my opinion, this book was released way too late, but better late than never. Although I understand that Shailey's emotional anger is directed at Todd and not Sarah, to a certain extent this was a losing proposition for a book project from the beginning. Sarah is (was) the candidate. Most of the details of Shailey's book constitute what I call whoopee cushions, political scandals that make a bit of embarrassing noise for political candidates, but are quickly and easily brushed aside when another news story comes along. If Shailey had seriously sought an agent in September 2008 to tell the story of how she personally gave a massage to a decidedly unpregnant Sarah the VP candidate in February or March of that year, we would have seen a wholly different ballgame. The problem at that time was that no one had the guts to come forward, then the book is released three (or more) years too late. In my opinion, Shaily was given less than perfect advice by her lawyer to approach The National Enquirer first because that rag is generally known to pay the best. As we now know, the spiral of silence has blockaded itself into a stone vault coated in lies.

Now that we have Shailey's story in print, there is one detail that particularly bugs me. On Page 71, Shailey writes that immediately following the massage, Sarah stood right up in front of her, wearing nothing but panties. If Sarah was also wearing a bra, it was not stated, but that is irrelevant. Shailey also states clearly that the date was the first week in March. On Page 73, Shailey describes first learning of Sarah's pregnancy on 4/18/08. If this part of the book is precisely true, then neither Shailey nor any of her coworkers watching the same described newscast was aware that Sarah had publicly announced her pregnancy back on March 5-6. Shailey tells a slightly different story on Page 189-190. In an interview with Blade Katz on her Sarah's Scandals blog in February 2011, Shailey clearly states that she left the room immediately after giving Sarah the massage, not seeing Sarah nearly nude and standing upright before her. Shailey says that she is not sure of this point. She says I don't think I saw her in a standing position that day. This is a key point that brings everything Shailey says and does into question, as if her involvement in a prostitution ring with a famous celebrity was not enough!

Shailey repeatedly implies that her memory of certain events was never very precise. That is fine on the surface of it, but Blade Katz happens be a pseudonym for Vickie Bottoms, the co-author of the book! There are many choices that could have been made in the editing process that would have defused this stink bomb. A disclaimer could have been inserted in the interview or that question deleted or the whole interview deleted. If the story was not exactly as stated on Page 71, someone working on this project should have spoken up before the book went to press! This is not a detail concerning one of Todd's whoopee cushions, this is the crux of the fraud that was perpetrated on the entire American voting public! This book may have been conceived and presented as Shailey Tripp's personal little tragedy, but we all know the backstory. Let's not pretend that we don't!

Few want to see Boys Will Be Boys succeed commercially in a big way more than I do. However, I am not going to just sit back and pretend that I don't see the credibility nightmare that hangs over this book like a cloud of illusion pooted out by the CNP. Shailey's book needs to be read by millions, but my hopes for its success were squashed long before its actual release. This is not the time to go into the details of the many reasons for my perception of this point. Let's just say that I believe Shailey Tripp is telling the truth as she perceives it concerning Todd's affairs and prostitution ring. Is that truth obscured by clouds? Yes, but it is still the truth.

See Also: A more traditional review of this book.