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Was Sarah Palin's pregnancy a hoax?
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
A new paper published today by Northern Kentucky University professor Bradford Scharlott, Ph.D., cites an unprecedented level of suspicious behavior and logical incongruity surrounding the birth of Sarah Palin's son, Trig, and the media investigation thereof in relation to her vice-presidential campaign in 2008.
The paper is a bit of a read at 29 pages, but nicely formatted and full of visuals, so it goes quick. Here's a link to the .pdf.
Summary:
Thoughts on the latest "birther" issue?
The paper is a bit of a read at 29 pages, but nicely formatted and full of visuals, so it goes quick. Here's a link to the .pdf.
Summary:
-
- Sarah Palin made no mention of her pregnancy to her staff or extended family until, by her statement, she was seven months along. Staffers were allegedly shocked, as no signs of pregnancy were present. This was suspiciously concurrent with the timeframe in which John McCain had begun courting her for candidacy.
- Palin's son was allegedly born 5 weeks premature. In Palin's autobiography, she states her water broke while in Texas giving a speech. She then boarded a plane to Seattle, then to Alaska, to her small community hospital where she gave birth, arriving 20 hours after her water broke. Her hospital did not contain an prenatal/neonatal intensive care unit. Also, it is against many airlines policies (and just about all doctors' recommendations) for women to fly in their third trimester.
- There has never been any recorded evidence submitted or found of an obstetrician or any other doctor, period, present at the time of Palin's alleged birth.
- Sarah Palin, despite the requests of the Anchorage Daily Mail and Atlantic Weekly, has refused to release a birth certificate for Trig Palin.
- At an invitation-only press gathering the day after Trig's alleged birth, Palin is photographed looking exceedingly pregnant, with a very large and distended belly. Oddly, photos from just 3 weeks before show Palin with a completely flat abdomen.
- Trig Palin's birth weight, per Palin, was over 6 pounds. The average weight of a baby born 5 weeks premature is around 5 lbs.
- In the months and years following the investigation, the Palin family and campaign has issued many official letters of rebuke to newspapers and organizations chastising them for investigating the story. However, Palin has refused all interviews on the subject, and has so far refused to release any official medical record of the birth, and refuses to name any medical staff present during the birth.
- The hospital where Palin allegedly gave birth, Mat-Su General Hospital, keeps records and posts announcements of daily births at their hospital. On the dates of Trig's purported birth, no births are stated to have occured that day.
Thoughts on the latest "birther" issue?
Atomika on
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Instant confirmation/denial. While I guess she could have adopted a kid secretly for political reasons, the simpler solution really seems to be she just didn't talk about for the first and second trimester (aren't you supposed to keep it quiet for some time anyway, since losing the baby early is super common?) and that she really is crazy enough to want to give birth in Alaska.
This just feels weird.
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This really seems like a tacky thing to be pressing the issue on. This sort of thing should be private, not public. And certainly not political.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Bristol Palin suspiciously transferred out of her nearby Wasilla high school to West Anchorage High, some 45 miles away, during the fall of 2007. Per the Palin family, it was over "fears of wide-spread mononucleosis" among the local studen population.
Her story has millions of holes, but so does every story she's ever told us about her life. *shrug*
It is certainly odd, but so is Palin. I don't see any motive in faking it, though.
Was it?
Many of the same suspicious regarding Trig's birth surround Tripp's birth as well. There was no official press release or family statement regarding Tripp's birth, despite Palin announcing Bristol's pregnancy at the RNC convention (an odd move in its own right), and the first family photographs of Tripp didn't appear until almost 2 months after his birth. The birth itself was "confirmed" by People Magazine by an interview with a great-aunt of the Palin's who lived miles away and was not present at the birth.
This very well could explain it. Then again, when has Palin ever had a motive for the bizarre and unhelpful stuff she's done?
But yeah, even if her electability chances weren't in negative digits already, all this would show is that Palin is an odd 'un, and that's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt countless times already.
Do we really want to be like the birthers?
... no. Just... no.
That would be why she carried him around and referenced him everywhere, but let's not go "she's crazy/mean enough to fake having a disabled child for a pity vote" levels of stupid here.
Palin, since being thrust on the national scene, has had a strong and easily-documented history of what is basically pathological lying. She lies about things that don't need to be lied about.
Would Sarah Palin's comments about Barrack Obama's birth certificate qualify, then?
Or how about her hollow promotion of the child's disability for political support?
There are a ton of reasons to validate investigating this issue, but honestly, I just don't care. Doing so would grant her more attention and inflate her martyr complex.
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So what do the conspiracy theorists think? That they switched babies for some crazy reason? There seems to be no motive here. And older women like Sarah Palin are orders of magnitude likelier to have a baby with Down Syndrome than a young mother like Bristol.
All this seems to indicate is that the Palins hate the press to know anything but what they tell them.
More than this, it's celebrity gossip levels of "oh my god let's find out what their family is up to!"
Politician having an affair? Probably a big deal, because it's probably some asshole chatting up the sanctity of marriage while banging someone on the side. Same with politicians getting divorces while screaming about the destruction of traditional marriage. Blatant hypocrisy? Newsworthy (though honestly, let's stop making their wives stand next to them during the fucking press conference. Unless she's allowed to ask all the questions.)
Digging into Palin's family is just.. tasteless. About the only thing that is dig-worthy is Bristol's pregnancy, just because she made it public, and only because she was running on an "abstinence education totally works" platform, not in any way to go after Bristol herself. Just to point out "ahem, maybe we should talk actual sex-ed, too?"
I think that when politican running for high office, i.e. someone who has a strong say in the lives of millions of people, campaigns on platforms of social restriction, evidence of subversion of those values should be fully investigated.
As well, I think the American people have a right to know if their potential presidential candidate is a crazy person.
This is about on the level with kicking a dead donkey to test if its ready to run the Kentucky derby
People were saying they couldn't see a reason she would do it. I gave a possible reason. Chill out.
This really is on par with the Obama birther wingnuts.
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If by "on par" you mean that only one of these issues is effectively resolved with legal documentation...
But again, I don't think this is an issue worth pressing.
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I'm trying to head off the "I'm not saying this is true, but maybe, and I'm just speculating here..." sniping. It happens constantly in our media narratives. There's a time when it's appropriate to just say "No. That's not what happened. At all. Let's stop this."
I mean, I can totally think of an outside reason why Obama's mother would lie and claim Obama was her child and put out fake birth notices in order to give him a better life when his kenyan father had an affair with some french woman and he was born! I mean, maybe it didn't happen, but I can totally see a reason for that to have happened!
Let's just not do this. Palin's family is off limits. It is not required to make Palin appear to be an unbalanced crazy person. We should probably all just get together and hope or pray that the family can eventually lead normal ish lives and not wind up being forced into a life of child celebrity and all the long term crap that entails.
All that said, I do also believe that this pregnancy and its outcome should be every bit as private as any other pregnancy. Plus, thinking about her makes me irritable, so the less I have to see this in the news, the happier I am.
I'd more concerned about a secret identical twin in the white house, than someone who might not have been born in the US.
As long as she continues to position herself as a potential choice in 2012, it's worth talking about.
I personally don't care that a woman from Alaska may or may not have lied about giving birth to what actually might have been her grandson in order to protect her daughter's reputation. I do have a problem with a politician lying about a pregnancy and using as political leverage.
As someone already said, it's a pretty easy issue to clear up.
Yeah totally. I saw Donald Trump on TV the other day ranting about how this whole problem would just go away if Obama could produce the original birth certificate from Hawaii's state records archive. It ought to be so easy that you have to wonder why he hasn't!
Oh wait we were talking about the other "birther" thing which is exactly analogous in that it's a gigantic and worthless distraction.
Why should she have to disprove some insane thing that some crazy conspiracy theorists came up with? If I come up with a theory she is secretly a man should she have to drop her pants to disprove it?
For real?
There is probably zero validity to any of this. I thought you posted the thread as a kind of Colbert style joke to make fun of "birthers". But you actually think it is "worth talking about"?
but they're listening to every word I say
And honestly, even if she is viable as a candidate, I just really don't see myself caring enough about the origins of her spawn. It doesn't provide any value in terms of muckraking, and even if I was inclined to support a smear campaign on any candidate, her daughter has already had a baby outside marriage once. Why would it be so scandalous to find out it wasn't the only time? I don't think her rabid supporters would change their opinions of her in the least.
Basically, you have two camps of people. The first are people who think Sarah Palin is a viable candidate for President, and they would support her candidacy if she went on the news tomorrow to say that she has vetted Satan as her running mate. The other camp fucking hates her guts and already thinks she'll ask Satan to be her veepee. Adding SCANDAL to the mix just means we can't rise above the same "birther" bullshit Obama has been dealing with for so long. It won't change anyone's mind.
Ross, I mean this in the nicest way possible, as someone who thinks that Palin is the absolute fucking worst. This OP is like a tabloid at the supermarket on whether Brad cheated on Angelina with Jen, just look at these pictures of them walking together down Rodeo Drive.
Besides, its not like Palin doesn't have eleventy billion other flaws to hammer on.
I think part of it is "Turnabout is fair play", as in these people should be held to the standards they want to hold Obama to. I could be horribly wrong, but that's what my instincts say.
There's such a thing as body of evidence. In this particular case, there's a decent case to be made that Palin is hiding something about her pregnancy. As well, being unable to conclusively prove that you were born in Hawaii is a completely different animal than faking a pregnancy, with completely different implications of one's personal character.
Barack Obama the Kenyan national is still Barack Obama. His origin of birth changes nothing about his character.
Can you honestly say the same about someone who fakes a pregnancy?
I think this is the point, but instead Obama has been taking out and replaced with a Birther.
If you operate on the assumption that yes, Obama faked his nationality and is the President of the United States illegally, I think that would be pretty bad indeed.
Faking a pregnancy? It sounds like something that would be on My Name is Earl.
Of course, we don't give birthers the time of day and I would expect this sort of topic to be treated similarly.