Sarah Palin and the truth

First they went after Gryphen (The Immoral Minority), then they turned their attention to Audrey (Palin's Deceptions) and now their target is Patrick (palin_deceives).

Two right wing bloggers appear to have nothing better to do than scour the internet in search of some dirt on Trig Truthers. Let me play the devil's advocate for a moment. Suppose we're all secret perverts and our closets are full of skeletons. Would that alter the fact that Sarah Palin didn't give birth to Trig?

I really fail to see the connection between people's private lives and their ability to question and analize the facts relating to Sarah Palin's pregnancy and delivery of Trig.

They have found flimsy and highly questionable stuff on some of the Trig Truthers, often presented out of context or simply untrue. But they're shouting it from the rooftops, as if any of it proved that Trig emerged from Sarah Palin's own body.

The internet is a very strange place, full of dark alleys, detours and dead ends. I searched myself and came up with a number of people using the handle "palingate", "PalinGate" and other variations. Am I all of them? Some of them? Or none of the above?

Each person they target knows who they are and can easily refute any false information. If they can't, what difference does it make?

Do people need to have Mother Theresa credentials before they're allowed to challenge a public figure who uses her special needs "son" to further her own agenda?

If I were a transvestite, cigar smoker, fond of a bit of bondage and ate cats' brains for breakfast, would that disqualify me from doubting a very fishy account of Sarah Palin's wild ride, dodgy pregnancy and other strange tidbits?

The difference between Trig Truthers and Sarah Palin is that we never had any power to influence people's lives as she did as governor of Alaska. We didn't run for vice president and we don't spout blatant lies on Facebook in a attempt to disrupt public debate on healthcare reform. We are not public figures, we are not polititians and what we are or do has no bearing on the truth.

What these nutters dig up on us doesn't make any difference in the great scheme of things. We remain private citizens who are not accountable to the electorate. But the stuff we dig up on Sarah Palin can make a lot of difference on the political landscape.

The truth about Sarah Palin can change things. Truths or lies about Trig Truthers change nothing.

(I'm not going to link to the right wing blogs, but you can find them among the comments on the last thread)
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Truths and lies in Sarah Palin's world

$arah Palin is threatening to sue our friend Gryphen for libel over a blog post about the state of her marriage.

The bloggers have written much more serious stuff about her since August 2008.

We spoke about her "pregnancy", and some blogs are entirely dedicated to the subject. Not a squeak out of her attorney.

We wrote about her complete lack of ethics, her cronies, her vindictiveness, her clothes, her hair, tattooed lips and eyebrows. Apart from protesting that questioning her ethics is a frivolous pursuit, nothing.

There were many posts all over the place about how she uses members of her family as props and about the babies being sedated for public appearances.

Again, no denials, no threats of lawsuits.

We questioned her mental health on several occasions. Silence.

Recently there have been threats of lawsuits regarding rumours about investigations, but they didn't come to anything.

The examples above were taken from the more civilized blogs. I wonder if $arah Palin had a look at the less savoury ones...

Let's play the devil's advocate for a moment. Let's say Gryphen was misled and reported something false. $arah Palin and her advisors couldn't let this falsehood stand and are taking decisive action.

If this "falsehood" is the only one that warrants a lawsuit, does that mean everything else is true, including stuff from the less ethical bloggers?

Just asking...
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Thanks for the truth

A stay-at-home mom from Wasilla whose e-mail information about Alaska's governor took on an Internet life of its own during last year's presidential campaign has won a "Special Recognition" award from the Alaska Press Club.
Anne Kilkenny, 60, is the runner-up to this year's Howard Rock/Tom Snapp First Amendment Award, which the Press Club describes as recognizing "Alaskans who demonstrate exemplary advancement of First Amendment values."

Here are some highlights from the famous e-mail:

"She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help."
"Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her."

"She is solidly Republican: no political maverick."

"As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens."

"There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she."

Thanks, Anne. You helped prevent quite a lot of spin and tall tales about Sarah Palin being the only version of her persona to reach the electorate.

We would have found out the truth sooner or later, but you made it happen sooner...

Full story from Alaska Dispatch.
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Sarah Palin is a liar (part 3)

Yes, yes, there's more...

Here's a highlight from Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the RNC, where it raised enthusiastic cheers from the crowd:

"And Todd is a world champion snow machine racer. Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package. And we met in high school, and two decades and five children later, he's still my guy."

Sarah is very proud of her truly native husband.

I found the following in an article about his background when interest in Sarah Palin grew during the vice presidential campaign. It was published in October 2008.

Todd does not take part in Native organizations or tribal politics. He grew up in Glennallen and Wasilla. His Native roots can be seen in his dividends from the Bristol Bay Native Corporation and boyhood visits with his grandma, where he learned to tend fish nets along the Nushagak River.

So our native Todd managed to qualify for dividends from a native corporation on the strength of his 1/8 Yup'ik genetic inheritance and gained so many practical skills he could put to good use upon the North Slope because he spent summers with his grandmother when he was a boy! The grandmother in question grew up in the mixed racial region of Bristol Bay, not an isolated Native village.

In the video posted in Sarah Palin is a liar (part 2), she says Todd grew up and lived in Dillingham, Western Alaska. In fact, he was born there but moved away and used to visit his grandma in the summer. Glennallen, where he spent the long Alaskan winters, is 160 miles east of Wasilla and not very rural at all. Glennallen is the business hub of the Copper River region. Local businesses serve area communities and Glenn Highway traffic, providing gasoline, supplies and services, four schools and medical care. Offices of the federal Bureau of Land Management, the state Department of Transportation, Alaska State Troopers and the state Department of Fish and Game are there.

He must have moved to Wasilla when he was a teenager, because, as Sarah said in her speech, that's where they met, in high school.

As somebody pointed out in a comment on part 2: "Yeah - I thought I REMEMBERED THAT. So, basically Sarah lied. So what else is new? Why should she lie about something that could be googled?"

Tut tut...

Map: Dillingham = 1 Wasilla = 2 Glennallen = 3
Sources: ADN
For more on Dillingham, click here
For more about Glennallen, click here.
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Babygate recap

It ocurred to me that not everybody is familiar with babygate and as it's so much fun to write about it, I decided to produce a timeline:

• March 2008- On the 6th, Sarah Palin announced to her colleagues that she was nearly 7 months pregnant. They were very surprised because her belly was as flat as a board. Apparently our Sarah has very very tight abs. Sarah told her work colleagues before she told her own family. Only Todd knew about it. Between the announcement and the next item in the timeline Sarah flew 18,000 miles! Many of these miles were long haul flights. Third trimester, long flights? Mmmm... During her whole pregnancy, Sarah didn't seem to have missed any appointments with her favourite hairdresser to maintain her lovely, rich hair colour with attractive highlights. Hair colouring during pregnancy? Mmmm...

• April 2008- 35 weeks into her pregnancy, at 4:00 am (Texas time) on the 17th, Sarah started leaking amniotic fluid and having contractions that felt different from the Braxton-Hicks she had experienced earlier in the pregnancy, a sign that things were moving along... She was in Texas for a very important conference and had to ring her good friend Dr Cathy Baldwin-Johnson back in Alaska to tell her what was going on. We don't know what the doctor told her during the telephone examination or how she checked how dilated Sarah's cervix was at this stage. But Sarah told the doctor that she had a speech she was determined to give to the conference at lunchtime and would fly back to Alaska after she had delivered it (the speech, not the baby). Sarah and Todd very wisely decided to skip the evening reception and Todd was asked to rearrange the flights so they could leave straight after the speech. Sarah leaked through her speech but she gave it, dammit! At no point was Sarah or the baby checked by a local doctor. But they kept in touch with Dr Baldwin-Johnson for further advice. After another thorough telephone examination, the doctor concluded that things had settled. Sarah and Todd started the journey back home just after lunch. They flew to Anchorage (with a 2 hour stopover in Seattle) and arrived around 10:30 pm (Alaska time), then drove 40 miles to a lovely, cosy, warm little hospital in Palmer, which doesn't have facilities to deal with high risk deliveries (of babies, not speeches). 44 year old multipara carrying a Down's Syndrome baby, leaking amniotic fluid over many many hours, premature onset of labour, not high risk? Mmmm... Anyway, at this point Sarah was induced and baby Trig arrived 5 weeks early at 6:30 am on the 18th. Three days later they were all back to work at the Governor's office! That's right, Sarah, Todd and premature Trig with Down's Syndrome showed up for work after three days. Business as usual, they had a state to run! Aren't things grand in Sarah's Alaska? Even premature babies are born tough, ready for anything! That's why Sarah and Todd defied all odds to make sure baby Trig was born a true Alaskan! Footnote: nobody noticed the Governor's stage of pregnancy during the 2 flights and stopover from Texas to Anchorage. Mmmm... Oh, I forgot the tight abs! (apart from the sarcastic tone, this is our Sarah's very own account of Trig's birth). Life was wonderful for the Palins until...

• August/September 2008- Late August: presidential candidate Senator John McCain announced his running mate, our very own Sarah... running for the office of vice-president of the USA (whatever it is that the VP does all day when not presiding over the Senate). Sarah was so elated that she got confused and referred to the Palin/McCain ticket at a rally! But, alas, there was trouble brewing. As one would expect, those horrible anonymous bloggers started spreading vicious, salacious rumours. They said Trig wasn't Sarah's baby! She was Trig's grandmother! The real mother was Sarah's 17 year old daughter Bristol! The horrible media reported it! OMG!!! What could the campaign do to dispel these terrible rumours? Show the world Trig's birth certificate with Sarah named as the baby's true and only mother? No!!! They had a better idea! They decided to tell the WHOLE WORLD that Bristol was FIVE months pregnant! Problem solved. Do the maths: Trig was four and a half months old at this stage, Bristol was five months pregnant, so of course she couldn't conceive the new baby while still pregnant with Trig! Silly people, it's all so obvious! The candidate for the other party, now President Obama, immediately issued a statement saying that candidates' families were off limits. The media dropped the story (the bloggers didn't). Then photos of Sarah from the period she would have been very pregnant started disappearing from several websites, notably from the Governor's photo collection on her own website. But the rumours had been dispelled and all was well again.

• November 2008- Palin/McCain lost the election!!!! (sorry, not part of this timeline). Back to the plot...

• December 2008- On the 28th (or was it the 27th?) Bristol gave birth to Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston (seriously). Case closed?

• February 2009- To date, not a single person has seen baby Tripp in any shape or form. Bristol has not been seen for months.

Mmmmmm......

I tried to keep it as short as possible, this was just an attempt to help any new readers not familiar with the story to understand the posts about Bristol, Trig, etc.

If you'd like to see a proper analysis of all the ins and outs of this saga, with loads of photos, visit Palin's Deceptions. They conduct very thorough, civilized and dignified research into all aspects of Trig's birth. There's nothing vicious or salacious about it.

Babies, pixels...

There was a very good blog dedicated to having a closer look at photos of Sarah Palin, her daughter Bristol and baby Trig in order to make sense of a very badly told story about Sarah Palin's "pregnancy".

Alas, the blog is no longer there... The author had to abandon her research due to threats to herself and her family. MK was getting nearer to the truth one pixel at a time, which was the subtitle of her website, also discontinued.

Do not despair! You can read the next chapter here.

All is not lost, and for each blogger intimidated into shutting down, there are plenty of others prepared to step in and continue to search for the truth.