Yes, it's true, Todd Palin dropped out of the Iron Dog snowmobile race yesterday. Another case of the Random Palin Quits? Nope, for once a Palin had a perfectly legit reason for quitting: Todd's racing partner Scott Davis crashed on a bad trail, injuring his back (he'll be okay, thank goodness).

See, this year's Iron Dog racers are up against some extra-tough conditions…

At one of the warmest Iron Dog starts in race history, drivers unzipped jacket vents and got ready for a spring-like day on the trail Sunday. "It's going to be a warm, wet ride," said Louis Miller III, patriarch of the father-son team from Anchorage.

Iron Dog officials said an icy course is in store for racers. Snow cover is adequate but not ideal, said Iron Dog board president Marianne Beckham.

Insufficient snow cover means patches of exposed dirt and ice, which makes racing treacherous even for experienced drivers like Palin and Davis…

Wet snow carved up by rain, heat and nearly 100 snowmachines left the trail deeply rutted and full of bumps. Davis and Palin started 22nd among the 29 teams on Sunday, putting them behind most of the pro class racers as well as the 28 trail class riders who started on Friday.

"It was as bad as I've ever seen it," said Davis, who ran his first Iron Dog in 1984. "It's pretty torn up. A lot of machines went over it. It's going to be one of those survival years."

Let me get this straight: unusually warm weather and a lack of snow helped create dangerous trail conditions that scratched Team Palin-Davis from the 2010 Iron Dog race. Is that about right?

Your move, Inhofe family.

When the nation's jobless rate edges up near 10 percent, and winter's coming, and there's no relief in sight, and you are but a humble Ex-First Dude with an unemployed wife and a dozen children to feed, what do you do?

Answer: Ask not what you can do for unemployment, but what unemployment can do for you…

Todd Palin won't be pulling a hard-core winter shift on Alaska's frozen North Slope, home to the richest oil fields in the country — at least not with energy giant BP.

Company spokesman Steve Rinehart said Todd Palin submitted his resignation effective Sept. 18. Todd was a production operator on Alaska's North Slope. Production operators manage oil gathering centers, hubs where oil comes together from multiple wells.

See that? See how the Palins have created well-paying jobs, two of them at least, in the state of Alaska?

International/financial/extraterrestrial expert Sarah Palin's big speech at a Hong Kong investment forum happened yesterday, and lucky for us, the Wall Street Journal gotcha'd its hands on a tape of the double secret event (closed to press, of course).

It seems Sarah Palin talked about everything, literally everything, from the econopocalypse (blame over-regulation) (??) to China ("makes people nervous") to Afghanistan to health reform to the Fed to, who knows, Trig's bowels?

Let's listen in as the unemployed lady tackles another hot-button issue: immigration…

She also spoke about how Alaska once shared a land bridge with Asia. And she noted that her husband's Eskimo ancestors crossed that bridge. "To consider that connection that allowed sharing of peoples and bloodlines and wildlife and flora and fauna, that connection to me is quite fascinating," she said.

INCORRECT. There is nothing "fascinating" about sneaking off to a foreign country to admit that your husband's family is full of Illegals. Come on, Sarah.

Todd Palin better not be getting any health care, ever.

Over the weekend the anonymous proprietor of a Blogspot publication filed an exclusive! (and explosive!) story about Sarah Palin, but only after extensive! background research consisting of a conversation with this one guy/lady who claims to know things that may or may not be true.

Sounds reliable enough…

Earlier this week one of my best sources claimed to have explosive new information for me. It took all week for us to finally get together, but last night we finally sat down for an amazing conversation. And what I heard made my jaw drop.

According to my source Sarah is finished with Todd and has decided to end their marriage.

Apparently in a fit of anger Sarah stripped the ring from her finger and tossed it into a lake. (No I did not think to ask WHICH lake so I cannot confirm if it is Lake Lucille, on which her house is located, or some other lake. I apologize for not getting clarification, but I was a little tired last night and so was my source.)

Presumably these folks have since gotten their naps, but in the meantime, what are the odds that an elected official, or even a former elected official, is going to acknowledge every scrap of unsubstantiated blathermongering that makes its way to the internet by issuing an actual response through an actual spokesperson?

Right. About as good as the odds that Sarah Palin is having a sexy secret affair with Mitt Romney.

Which I hear, exclusively, is the case.

Former comedian Dennis Miller was on The O'Reilly Factor Wednesday night and said more than half the country views Sarah Palin unfavorable simply because she enjoys having sex.

MILLER: Listen, she's a great dame. People are fascinated by her because the left hate her. I think the left hate her — mostly women on the left hate her, because to me, from outside in, it appears that she has a great sex life. All right? I think she has non-neurotic sex with that Todd Palin guy. I think most of the women on the Upper East Side, their husbands haven't been aroused since Mailer signed copy of The Executioner's Song at Rizzoli's back in the early '70s.

So they look at her, and they hate her. I think that snowmobile looks like mechanized foreplay to me, and that's why people are fascinated by it.

Well, first of all, I just have to say that I'm pleased to see that an esoteric literary non sequitur is what now passes for a bona fide Millerism.

Second of all, I haven't seen an attempt for attention that desperate since Billy Faulkner's birthday party. Know what I mean, babe?

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, Cha Cha, but the last time I saw calculated outrageousness and feigned chauvinism that lazy, I was shooting pool with Chuck Dickens and Danny Alighieri in Euripides' basement.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Alaskans are simple folk, and they know their priorities.  They like their winters dark, their moose field-dressed (whatever that means), and their Governors dumb as rocks.

They also like their guns.  And since it's obvious that in President Obama's coming Nazi-Marxist-Fascist police state all individual liberties will be destroyed, they're stockpiling those guns as fast as they can.

Over the past week, ammunition has been selling by the pallet-load at the shop [Alaska Shooters Supply]. Guns, particularly military-style weapons, are a hot ticket.

And high-capacity magazines were selling so well, the Boniface Parkway shop ran out the week of the Nov. 4 election.

That's no coincidence. Fear of stiffer gun laws after Barack Obama's successful presidential bid and a Congress with a larger Democratic edge is prompting gun enthusiasts across the country to stock up in record numbers.

"Obama is the best gun salesman we've had in the last 50 years," said Jack Murray, Alaska Shooters Supply owner. "We sold more guns (the day after the election) than I have on any one particular day in 21 years. I was crying all the way to the bank."

There's no question that Obama's first act as president will be to unilaterally repeal the Second Amendment, since that's well within the power of the president to do.

And Alaskans can't be blamed for worrying about their precious guns.  After all, they're going to need them when their state secedes from the Union and declares Todd Palin to be its leader!