In spite of some recent comments to the contrary, I am trying very hard to base the information on this site and blog on what has been widely published and available in the mainstream press. Our photographic evidence that Sarah Palin did not appear pregnant comes from extensive documentation, from places like Anchorage Daily News and the AP, as well as the official state of Alaska website, and many private individuals. Information on Sarah Palin's birth story comes from one place: Sarah Palin's own (at times conflicting) statements. Information that rumors that Bristol was pregnant predated Sarah Palin's pregnancy announcement came from Palin's own spokesperson. Information that Palin's doctor will not make a simple statement regarding the birth comes from the fact that she hasn't.
When something is based only on hearsay or gossip, I believe I have made it clear that this is the case. For example, I have said repeatedly that other than the one statement from the principal of Wasilla High School that Bristol Palin left "last fall," there is NOTHING that I can find anywhere that gives any sort of real information on where she was when. That she did or did not attend high school in Anchorage, that she did or did not live with her aunt... all of that is speculation. It's been widely published... but never confirmed and I have made that clear.
I have already given my real name and phone number to several correspondents and we have exchanged phone calls. I am willing to do that with anyone who seems credible in a few email exchanges. If a friend of Bristol Palin's from school wants to go on the record on the phone with me and state that she was with Bristol the day after Trig was born, believe me I will talk to that person and I will publish that information on the site and blog, fairly and accurately.
This site is not now and has never been about "smearing" Gov. Sarah Palin. I disagree sharply with many of her policies. However, I also disagree sharply with many of - for example - Mike Huckabee's policies. If McCain had picked him as a vice presidential running mate, it's highly unlikely I would be blogging about him.
I started this site and blog because Sarah Palin's birth story made utterly no sense to me as a medical professional. As I say on the front page of the site, I considered it "utterly absurd, an implausible series of ridiculous choices." I felt that even a chance that she had faked a pregnancy would show a lack of character so profound, I could not let it lie.
Since I have begun my research, Gov. Palin has been caught in several outright fabrications about the details of her pregnancy and birth - again, not based on gossip or rumors, but based on her own statements given to mainstream publications, for example her statement that Willow spotted Trig's Down's characteristics at birth but her own statement to the Anchorage Daily News three days after the birth was that the Down's was not yet noticeable. Of course, this only serves to make me more suspicious.
This website and blog is not based on gossip. It's based on circumstantial evidence gathered from sources as reputable as I can locate. And as a veteran prosecutor said to me in email several days ago, " I think you should also take it as a pretty good sign of seamlessness in the concrete evidence that, after 23 years in the business of analyzing holes in cases, I just don't see them here."
If anyone has evidence to the contrary, they need only contact me. I guarantee I will talk to you.
No Time for Tuckerman
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Time. It is precious, they say. It flies, they say. And former Republican
Party Chair, former Dunleavy Chief of Staff, and now former University of
Alaska ...
1 year ago
16 comments:
Audrey,
You are exactly right, again. Sarah Palin's labor and delivery story is not credible on its face.
I challenge ANYONE to show me one other documented case where a women knew she was in labor, her water had broken on a fifth (or fourth or third) child, then travelled waited 20 hours, delivered a speech, flew 4000 miles and eight hours then drove to a remote hospital so that her friend non-OB/GYN doctor could deliver a triple-high-risk baby.
I didn't think so.
But I have been proposing the Willow-as-Trig's-mom theory to point out the central facts that any theory of the parentage of the two Palin babies (assuming there are two of them) must address:
There are three Palin women and two Palin babies. This leaves the following possibilities:
1) Sarah is mother of Baby 1; Bristol is mother of Baby 2.
2) Bristol is mother of Baby 1; Bristol is mother of Baby 2.
3) Willow is mother of Baby 1;
Bristol is mother of Baby 2.
4) Bristol is mother of Baby 1; there is no Baby 2.
5) Sarah is mother of Baby 1; there is no Baby 2.
6) Willow is mother of Baby 1; there is no Baby 2.
The Palins' official story is 1).
5) and 6) don't make any sense.
Most people have focused on possibilites 2) and 4). But we cannot rule out possibility 3).
That's all I'm saying. If anyone wants to challenge the logic of this, be my guest.
Dangerous
Well said, again, Audrey. Your sensible tone and content, and your careful reporting, again show that there are serious credible questions here - that the Palin campaign could easily answer and has not!
Audrey...
Well said, but honestly I don't doubt that a friend would give you that kind of a statement to conceal the truth that we all know. The fact of the matter is that Palin's story just doesn't make sense, and until there's evidence that I believe clears it up (such as a sworn statement from the Dr., medical records, etc) I'm not going to believe any of her little friends, fake birth certificates, or other sources.
**Miss Lexstasy**
Audrey, very well put. I've been impressed by your desire to stay as evidence-based as possible.
I am no SP fan, not by a long shot. But if someone, somewhere, were to come forward with real proof that Trig's birth happened just the way she said, more or less...who would dispute that? Or even if it was a situation in which she covered something up for her daughter out of a desire to spare her pain or heartache...well, it wouldn't make me vote for her, but at least it would make sense in a weird sort of way.
Unfortunately, there is nothing except silence from everyone who knows anything. This, combined with other fairly alarming details that are emerging--like Troopergate, to name but one--this is an example of who we want helping to lead our country?
Thanks again for this site. I hope that the comments from readers continue to stay as civil as they have been and not devolve into rudeness or insults. No matter whose child Trig his, he's a beautiful baby and hopefully a bright spot in his parents' lives.
Molten Contra (aka MC) Palin
Re the statement by the veteran prosecutor, I am a veteran civil trial lawyer.
We are trained to look for holes in stories - things that don't make sense. Sarah Palin's story doesn't make sense.
We are also trained on how to spot liars - the nervous tics, the voice inflections and other indications that give them away.
To me, there seemed to be quite a bit of nervousness in Sarah Palin's voice in the video that you posted where she said that she never showed during pregnancy with Trig because she has such tight abs. To me, the inflection in her voice when she made that statement gave her away.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/09/22/080922crbo_books_lepore
The link above to a New Yorker article about the centuries-long refusal of historians to consider the evidence for Thomas Jefferson's relationship with a slave he owned, Sally Hemings, with whom he fathered six children, is relevant to the Sarah Palin pregnancy (non-)coverage.
Until DNA evidence removed all doubt of the Jefferson-Hemings family, generations of scholars discounted and ignored the evidence, and those scholars (and journalists) who did not were stigmatized. The scholar whose analysis was ultimately vindicated by the DNA research discussed this at a conference at the University of Virginia in 1999, as quoted in the New Yorker article:
"Perhaps the most persistent, and ultimately damaging, feature of the original debate over whether the relationship existed at all was the tight rein placed upon the historical imagination. One was simply not to let one’s mind wander too freely over the matter. Brainstorming, drawing reasonable inferences from actions, attempting to piece together a plausible view of the matter were shunted into the category of illegitimate speculation, as grave an offense as outright lying."
This is the same response that blogger Andrew Sullivan and others who've questioned Palin's pregnancy have received.
Wonderfully clear statement again, Audrey. Well done!
There would still be a problem if someone did come up with a birth certificate or some other singular piece of evidence. How would that explain away a very non-pregnant-looking Palin in the photos? I think we would not believe such 'evidence', not because we are all so biased and one-eyed, but because if any evidence is given as proof that Trig is Sarah's baby, it will have to be a bundle of evidence to answer a bundle of questions. One piece of evidence won't answer everything.
As an aside, I'd still like to know if Trig really does have Downs Syndrome and that it is not something else. Not being a medical person I am not aware of the possibilities.
Syd.
Trig could very easily have fetal alcohol syndrom. Gee....doesn't bristol drink alot?...
And yeah, at THIS point in time, forget about a damn birth certificate, put that whole family on maury povich (sp?) and let them DNA test the WHOLE family.
It has to be MORE than just a pregnancy that is being covered. It either is:
1. bristol's baby with FAS
2. bristol's baby with TOD as the dad. (would explain the downs)
3. willow's baby
I still want someone to track down Sarah Palin's phone records from when she was in Texas. According to her story, she should have an outgoing call to Alaska around 4:00 am. My guess is that she received an incoming call from Alaska, at least initially.
Aren't cell phone records accessible to those who know how?
I'm the veteran prosecutor, and just wanted to make clear that it is Audrey's concrete presentation in which I can find no holes. As the civil litigator will probably agree, cases are tried by measures of inclusion. In prosecuting a circumstantial criminal case (which cannot be faulted in the same way someone may go after eyewitness testimony, for bias or simple mistake), we build on measures of evidence consistent with guilt, and the case easily would fall if there is any measure of concrete evidence inconsistent with guilt. As Audrey has said, it would be so easy for the Palins to have provided (or provide even today) a decisive piece of evidence that is inconsistent with Bristol being the mother of the child. Instead, every incontestible piece of evidence (even putting aside every bizarrely shaded statement of the interested parties--like the mysteriously-disappeared doctor who of course wouldn't have needed to give "permission" to a woman who was not her patient to take a plane trip) has gone the other way.
I applaud Audrey's work, and echo her calls for civility.
If you will forgive another follow-up (now that I've figured out how to put a name up)....by stressing the nature of a powerful circumstantial case, I did not mean to underestimate the importance of what the civil litigator said. Audrey has not only presented an overwhelmingly powerful circumstantial case that Sarah Palin did not give birth to that baby (how hard a question is that for the McCain campaign: did your VP candidate give birth to a fifth child?), but consider the other traditional kinds of evidence one considers in trying to find the truth. For example:
(1) Who has a bias or motivation to lie about the identity of the child's birth mother?
(2) Does any party of central importance to this have a demonstrated history of lying/denying objective facts?
(3) Whose demeanor/statements/conduct is at odds with objectively-ascertainable facts?
(4) Whose demeanor/statements/conduct is at odds with basic common sense?
(5) Why in the world is everyone involved being so.....well......lawyerly? And how do you reconcile people's statements with what is known as a fact? Again, a small but telling example: if the doctor who attended the birth says she didn't give medical permission to Sarah Palin to fly to Alaska, and Sarah Palin herself says the same doctor "greenlighted" her trip, it seems to me there's a simple way to reconcile those statements, and to account for why they are both phrased in such a way. The doctor could have "greenlighted" the trip in the sense of saying, "Yes, you've probably got time to make it back by the time my patient gives birth." The doctor didn't need to give a "medical OK" to fly--or "medical" permission to do anything else, like travel in the first place--to her patient's mother.
Sure would be nice to be able to pose follow-up questions.
To the lawyers posting excellent points in this thread, may I add (as a non-lawyer) that it is important in any circumstantial case to consider all the possibilities from the available evidence.
I agree that the case against Sarah Palin being Trig's mother is very strong. The case of Bristol being Trig's mother is weak, however. It is greatly weakened if Bristol is, indeed, 6 months pregnant. We should know the truth of that issue soon enough. When Bristol gives birth to another Palin child, we can either rule her out as Trig's mother or we can't.
Once Baby 2 is born, we will rule out the possibilities 4-6 I outlined above, and perhaps also #2. That will only leave 1) and 3).
I'm patient enough to wait. If Bristol has a child her child in, say, February, then she might be the mother of both babies.
Whenever she gives birth, however, it does not rule out possibility #3.
Only documentation can confirm or rule out possibility #1.
Dangerous
A friend of a good friend of the Palin's from Wasilla, said that Bristol had a "meth" problem, and that this is common knowledge.
Maybe that can be factored into your theory and/or investigated.
Having worked in Labor and Delivery in a hospital setting for over 20 years, I can tell you with almost no hesitancy that he pictures of Mercedes Johnston and her "little brother Triggy-bear" are taken in a hospital birthing suite. The baby in the pics is a newborn,2-3 days old, and Sarah is definitely NOT in a post partum body!
Audrey,
Has anyone tried to compare the background (or the furniture) in the picture of Mercedes holding Trig with the actual rooms in the maternity ward of the Mat-Su hospital?
It would be interesting if you could establish that the picture was taken at a different hospital altogether.
There's a virtual tour on the site; the birthing rooms do look similar.
http://www.matsuregional.com/getpage.php?name=services_obstetrics&sub=Services#
Sandia Blanca
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