Glenn Beck likes his dates. Hot on the heels of his successful 8/28 ‘Restoring Honor’ rally Beck is re-teaming with sidekick Sarah Palin to throw a 9/11 shindig. This time in Alaska. Maybe they are trying to restore 9/11? Unlike the 8/28 rally this one will cost you. Tickets for the event “range from a low of $73.75 per person (including taxes and fees) to a high of $225, for a spot in the arena and participation in a “meet and greet.” The Hill notes there is “no indication to whom or what the proceeds will go.”
I actually can’t find mention of the event on Glenn Beck’s website but here’s how Sarah Palin described it:

Glenn’s coming to the Last Frontier! I hope my fellow Alaskans (and anyone visiting from Outside) will join me this Saturday, September 11, 2010, at Anchorage’s Dena’ina Center at 8:00 p.m. Glenn Beck will be there – you won’t want to miss it. Tickets are available at Ticketmaster.com.
We can count on Glenn to make the night interesting and inspiring, and I can think of no better way to commemorate 9/11 than to gather with patriots who will “never forget.” Hope to see you there!

Naturally, the pairing of Palin and Beck on 9/11 is offensive to some including Keith Olbermann who thinks they’re the worst people in the world (below). Though, honestly, relatively speaking, I don’t see what the big deal is. Or what the big deal is compared to the content of Glenn Beck’s show, which reaches millions and Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, which has been unduly influencing public policy for a least a year. As I understand it, these are just some speeches they’re giving to a crowd in Alaska, and they both happen to be quite good at giving speeches. Charging for tickets might be a bit unseemly but so are a lot of things connected to 9/11 this year, including the tables of 9/11 ‘memorabilia’ sold in and around Ground Zero.
Update: Statement from a spokesperson: “Glenn had always intended to donate the speaking fee from the event on Saturday, September 11th in Alaska to Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Governor Palin is not and was never going to receive a fee for introducing Glenn at this event.”
What I happen to find more fascinating about this is the continued pairing of Beck and Palin, both Fox News personalities, in events having nothing to do with Fox News. When I first saw them together on Beck’s show last January I thought they sort of canceled each other personality-wise, but co-headlining events is obviously a PR bonanza for the pair and between their combined success in publishing, television, Facebook and their influence on the nation’s political dialogue one wonders if they aren’t testing the waters for a media enterprise of their own. It would certainly be a far more realistic endeavor than any of the political ambitions that some folks have been recently speculating the two might have.

Sarah Palin Neighbor From Hell

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sarah Palin can take down the fence.

Palin's neighbor of three months on Wasilla's Lake Lucille, author Joe McGinniss, is packing his bags and notebooks and leaving Sunday for his home in Massachusetts to write the book he has been researching on the former governor and GOP vice presidential candidate.His arrival in May made headlines and drew an indignant reaction from Palin and a visit from her husband, Todd.

The Palins even tacked an extension onto an 8-foot board fence between the homes, leaving only a part of their second-story home visible from McGinniss' driveway.
Peeping into windows or peering through knotholes was never part of his research, McGinniss said."I've been very busy but on Lake Lucille it's been very quiet," he said. "As I told Todd back in May — he came over to get in my face about moving in there — I said, 'You're not even going to know I'm there. A lot of the time, I'm not going to be here. And when I am, I mind my own business. I don't care what happens on your side of the fence. That's not why I'm here.'"

And that's how it has played out, McGinniss said.A Palin spokesman didn't immediately respond to an e-mail Saturday seeking any comments from the governor on the author's departure.McGinniss has written best-selling books, including "The Selling of the President," on the marketing of Richard Nixon, "Fatal Vision," an account of the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case, and "Blind Faith," about a businessman's contract killing of his wife.He's no newcomer to Alaska. Thirty-five years ago, McGinniss moved to the state to see how new oil money would affect Alaskans. He wrote a draft, returned for three months in 1977, and two years later completed "Going To Extremes." The book has recently been reissued.

McGinniss had been gone from Alaska for 28 years when he returned in 2008 to research a magazine article on Palin's natural gas pipeline initiative, which she had heralded in the presidential campaign. McGinniss' critical story in the now defunct Conde Nast publication Portfolio was titled "Pipe Dreams." He concluded that for all of Palin's posturing, her only accomplishment in two years of work on the pipeline project had been to award $500 million from Alaska's budget to a Canadian company and to leave Alaska again at the mercy of Big Oil.

"She said it was a hit piece," McGinniss said. "For a day she was upset. I said it was a hit piece: It hit the bulls-eye."So when McGinniss moved next door in May, Palin may have suspected that his future book was not going to be flattering.
Up went the fence, along with a Facebook posting implying something sinister: "Here he is about 15 feet away on the neighbor's rented deck overlooking my children's play area and my kitchen window. We're sure to have a doozy to look forward to with this treasure he's penning. Wonder what kind of material he'll gather while overlooking Piper's bedroom, my little garden, and the family's swimming hole?"

McGinniss said he didn't seek out the rental home. During his search for a place to live, he said, the homeowner sought him out. The price was right and it was close to the people he wanted to talk to.Anybody wanting to spy on the Palins, McGinniss said, would be better off in a boat."That's the funny thing," he said. "They live in a place where anybody who wants to look onto their property, all they have to do is get a boat and park 10 yards off shore and they can sit there all day and look at the Palin's yard, if that's what they want to do. But I don't know who would want to do that."

Throughout the summer, McGinniss said, he kept a chain across his driveway to keep tourists out."They want to take pictures of 'The Fence' or they want to try to come onto my land and climb up on a ladder and take a picture over the fence of Palin's. I'd say, you can't do that."Two days before his departure, he did not want to be photographed with the fence, lest he unnecessarily antagonize his neighbors after a peaceful summer.McGinniss would not reveal what his book will say about the former governor. But he did get a taste of the support Palin has inspired.

"It's just a peculiar thing, but she does, as I found out in May, she presses a button and what comes back is hate," he said. "The people who respond when she complains about something are just so filled with hate. I got some of the ugliest, most vile e-mails directed at me, my grandchildren, my children, my wife — just ugly, ugly stuff."As for his interviews, most people he approached in Palin's hometown were willing to speak, but he said there was what he calls an "undercurrent of fear."

"People — I don't know if they're afraid of shadows or whether there's something real there — she's no longer in a position of governmental influence but there are people up there who are scared to death to talk because if Sarah ever found out they talked, oh, something terrible would happen to them," he said.Once he settled in, McGinniss said, he didn't have a single unpleasant encounter with anybody in Wasilla. Some people objected to the welcome he had received."They started bringing me blueberry pie. I had many offers of handguns to borrow. I turned them all down. But for about two weeks there, I couldn't say hello to somebody without, they said, 'I've got a couple of guns for you in my truck.'"

He found people willing to talk, as he had in 1975."It was the greatest place because there were no closed doors. There was nobody who said, 'I don't want to talk to you. And that's pretty much the way it is today with the single exception of that least Alaskan of all Alaskans, Sarah Palin.'" He is sure she will run for president."Everything she's doing is geared to that," he said. "And, she wants to be president. And God wants her to be president, so how can she say no?"

He's glad Palin is around, because it enabled him to return to a place he loves after nearly three decades."The only way back was Sarah Palin," McGinniss said. "That's my interest in her. If she was the governor of Nebraska, I wouldn't be writing about her, because I wanted a reason to come back to Alaska, and she was my key to the door."

Retail Sarah

(Blogger's Note) In the 2008 Presidential campaign when Sarah Palin burst on the national scene it was surprising enough with her trade marked smirk instead of a smile and her strange denial of her wardrobe's value when the truth was as obvious as the price tag on Minnie Pearl's hat. The GOP felt that she needed to be dressed for success. Nobody would have blamed her for accepting their largess. She chose, instead to lie about it and pretend to be indignant. What a transparent ruse. I have to wonder how the Potomac didn't boil over when this phony showed up at a strange event in front of it was done to "Restore Honor". I thought you had to have it to share honor. Funny me.....

Sarah Palin’s Shopping Spree: Yes, There’s More...
Bose headphones. A birthday dress for Bristol. Campaign documents and e-mails reveal the fine print.
By Michael Joseph Gross•
Photo illustration by Hamish Robertson
WEB EXCLUSIVE September 1, 2010
he clothes. Few aspects of Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential candidacy have been more discussed than the $150,000 worth of clothing and accessories bought by the Republican National Committee’s coordinated campaign fund on behalf of the candidate and her family in 2008. Yet interviews with campaign aides and internal campaign e-mails and documents obtained exclusively by Vanity Fair shed new light on the situation, revealing Palin to have been more innocent at the start of this shopping odyssey than has previously been reported—and more knowing and more calculating as time went on.

Initially, Palin objected to the very idea of clothing being purchased for her to wear at the Republican National Convention. When she was first presented with a $3,500 jacket, an aide recalls, the price tag sent her into shock: “I don’t spend that much money on my clothes in a year,” Palin said. “I will not do this.” Aides decided, in future, to cut off the price tags, so Palin wouldn’t quite know how much was being spent. But eventually, they say, Palin grew accustomed to the privilege of a designer wardrobe—not only for herself but also for her family.

On October 21, 2008, Federal Election Commission filings revealed the massive expenditures made on behalf of the candidate, her husband, and her children. As was reported at the time, the vast majority of the purchases—$130,000—were made by Jeff Larson, a Republican consultant in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the 2008 convention was held. Other purchases were made by a stylist, a Dallas fund-raising firm, and campaign staff. In fact, shopping for the Palins involved many campaign staffers: at least eight of the candidate’s aides requested reimbursement for clothing purchases for the Palins that they charged to their personal credit cards. The records of those purchases also reveal that Palin’s later claims—that “we had three days of using clothes that the R.N.C. purchased” (at the Republican National Convention) and that she understood the clothes to have been “loaned to us during the convention”—were completely false. So was the spin of Palin’s campaign spokesperson, who stated on October 22 that “it was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.” On October 23, in a previously unpublished e-mail (quoted below), Palin wrote that she had no idea the clothes would eventually need to be returned, and suggested that she believed the items were being given to her and her family as gifts. And campaign documents show that, remarkably, the spending continued into October. On the 20th, the day before the clothes-buying sprees were made public, a staffer paid $639.36 for clothes and a coat at Macy’s and Ann Taylor in Reno.

Throughout October, staff members were still buying clothing and accessories for the Palins. That month’s purchases, which totaled more than $9,000, would seem to stretch the boundaries of what constitutes a legitimate campaign expense. On October 9, a “Jersey for Piper” was purchased at a store called I Love Cincinnati. On October 10, a $316.94 pair of Bose headphones were purchased for Sarah Palin in Pittsburgh. (Separate purchases that day were made for “Intimates” and “Workout Clothes.”) On October 16, a “Jewelry case” purchased in Concord, New Hampshire, was charged to the campaign.

On October 17, the day before Bristol’s birthday, after a senior Palin aide asked a junior aide, in an e-mail, “Do you mind talking w/Bristol about getting an outfit for tomorrow & via the campaign. Thanks,” the response came back: “Yep. I talked to her about it this morning and picked up a few dress options at saks during the event today. And a pair of snazzy shoes to wair on her bday : ).” That same day, the same junior staffer charged $1,312.94 at Saks 5th Avenue in Cincinnati. In campaign records, that expense was labeled as if it were made not for Bristol but for the candidate’s appearance on Saturday Night Live. (The memo line reads “Clothes-SNL.”)

On October 23, two days after stories about Palin’s exorbitant campaign clothing budget first surfaced, Palin e-mailed aides in a fury: “Ridiculous – I’ll try to be patient through this, but this is ridiculous and hypocritical in terms of my values, and prudent use of ‘other people’s money’ – It’s puzzling, even infuriating, why the clothes issue is what it is now. My family was never told that all must be returned ... Not until two days ago when I read we may have a challenge in tracking down [her son] Track’s very expensive sweater(s) (that he didn’t request), as they’re either on base at Ft. Wainwright somewhere, or perhaps even overseas ... I’ve asked many, many times how this was all supposed to work with clothes that were presented me and the kids – who was paying … ” (A close campaign aide says that this is untrue, and that Palin never asked any such questions.)

But in the very next paragraph, Palin was trying to figure out a way to hang on to some of the items: “Do they want the nylons and other things that are pretty worn, returned?” (And she asked a campaign aide, “Do they really want my dirty undergarments?” Indeed, Palin had something of a fixation on the handling of her undergarments, and insisted, when hotel maids did her laundry, that only campaign aides be allowed to touch those particular articles.) Attempting to wrest some control over the situation, she added, “I want say in the charities these will go to.”

By the time she returned to Alaska, after Election Day, Palin’s transformation was complete. An e-mail string dated November 7 includes terse directives to aides to search for particular items of clothing that she wanted to keep: “Remember the five black leather Flyers bags w sweatshirts and jerseys and Flyers propaganda in each bag? Anyone know where they ended up?” One of the aides who were sent to Alaska to retrieve and catalogue the items purchased for Palin recalls that, during these days, mysteriously, “all of a sudden, she couldn’t find stuff.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/10/sarah-palin-spending-201010