After the Top Ten Clues in the "Who-is-Trig's-Mother" Mystery, here are ten more clues in the "Who-is-Trig's-Mother" Mystery:
11. No Maternity Leave
12. Pictures of a Not-so Pregnant Sarah, Two Weeks Before the Birth
13. Mercedes Johnson’s Strange Pictures
14. Chances Are
15. Andrew Sullivan's Request for Sarah Palin’s Medical Records Denied
16. At least four independent sources of Rumors Before the Birth.
17. National Enquiry Digs Up Something. Was Bristol Thrown Out of Her house?
18. Bristol Disappears, Appears, Then Disappears Again.
19. Sarah’s Confession:“I told Trig’s Mom and Dad…”?
20. The Travels of Sarah and Trig.
11. No Maternity leave
Sarah Palin, as an Alaskan public employee, was entitled to up to 18 weeks of maternity leave. [i] She took none [ii], not even one day. Trig was born on a Friday morning, and Palin was back at work on Monday morning. She claims to have signed a bill on Friday, so she was even working on the Friday that Trig was born.
Palin might secretly be opposed to maternity leave and therefore did not take it. However, she has never made any statements to this effect.
It is hard to understand why Palin, if she did, in fact, give birth to Trig would refuse the paid maternity leave that she was entitled to. She gave birth to a premature baby with Down Syndrome at the age of 44. She had just been through a long 29 1/2 hour ordeal from the time her water broke to the time of delivery. Certainly, as a simple medical precaution, she should have taken time off to recover. [iii]
Just as importantly, babies need constant care and attention in the first few months after birth. Babies with Down Syndrome need extra care and must take further precautions. Among the additional risks for babies with Down Syndrome are “Congenital Heart Defects, Gastrointestinal Defects, Ear, Nose and Throat Problems, Orthopedic Problems, Endocrine Disorders and other problems [iv]…” Not taking maternity leave shows disregard for both her baby’s health and her own health.
On the other hand, if Bristol was the mother, Palin could not have legally taken maternity leave. This explains why she would refuse maternity leave. By accepting maternity leave, Sarah Palin would have been committing fraud against the state of Alaska, a criminal felony.
Thus it seems that if she was Trig’s mother, she refused maternity leave for no apparent reason; or if not Trig’s mother, she refused it for the excellent reason that taking it would have been a crime.
12. Pictures of a Not-so Pregnant Sarah, Two Weeks Before the Birth
There are pictures on the internet appearing to show Sarah Palin pregnant. This was the first one and the clearest evidence of her pregnancy.
However, it is logical that if Palin announced herself pregnant, she would show some signs of pregnancy. We should expect to find pictures of her pregnant irregardless if it were a fake pregnancy or a real pregnancy. What is surprising is to find pictures of her in the sixth month where she appear barely pregnant at all. For example.
Perhaps the best examples of Sarah Palin looking barely pregnant in her third trimester are on the blog “Some New Photo Evidence” at http://www.palindeception.com/blog/
Here is one photo from there:
13. Mercedes Johnson’s Strange Pictures
Mercedes Johnson, Levi Johnson’s sister, posted some pictures on her website. Under one picture is the caption: Mommy-in-law Trig and Myself [v]
Under another picture she refers to Trig as her new baby-brother. These references are ambiguous.
What is not ambiguous is that the sister of Bristol’s boyfriend is holding the baby who appears to be only a few days old at most. Why is Palin letting this teenage girl hold her one month premature baby with Down Syndrome. Isn’t it a possible health risk to let strangers hold your prematurely new-born this way?
At this point in time, according to the official story, Levi and Bristol are simply boyfriend and girlfriend. They certainly had not decided to marry. If they had, they certainly would have done it as soon as Bristol became pregnant.
Why is Mercedes then treating Trig and Sarah as family members. It makes sense for her to do this if Trig is Bristol’s baby, then they are in fact family members related by blood and Trig is not her baby brother, but her brother’s baby. It does not make sense if Bristol and Levi are simply girlfriend and boyfriend to be referring so intimately to non-relatives.
This is certainly not a smoking gun, but simply another puzzling clue that best fits in with a Bristol birth, rather than a Sarah birth.
14. Chances Are
The increased risk of having a Down Syndrome baby at a later age is often sited as evidence for Sarah Palin being the mother rather than Bristol [vi]. It is certainly true that this one factor does point towards that conclusion.
A chart at http://www.ds-health.com/risk.htm, based on a Journal of American Medicine Association article form 1983, shows that a women 15-19 have a 1 in 1250 chance of giving birth to a child with Down Syndrome, while a woman age 43 has a 1 in 50 chance. This means that by age Sarah Palin had 25 times the chances as Bristol to give birth to a baby with Down Syndrome.
These would be the correct odds if we were just considering the likelihood of a pregnant 16 year old and a pregnant 43 year old having a baby with Down Syndrome. However, this leaves out the odds of a 16 year old becoming pregnant and having a baby versus a 43 year old becoming pregnant and having a baby. To be fair, we must consider the facts of decreasing fertility with age and increasing chances of miscarriage with age. Note this from babycenter.com [vii]:
Two-thirds of women over 40 have fertility problems, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). Once you pass 40, time is pitiless. You have about a 5 percent chance of getting pregnant in any single ovulation cycle, according to leading fertility specialist Sherman Silber, director of the Infertility Center of St. Louis at St. Luke's Hospital in Missouri and author of four best-selling fertility books, including How to Get Pregnant. At 40 your chance of conceiving within a year of beginning to try is about 40 to 50 percent, compared to a woman in her mid-30s, who has a 75 percent chance. By age 43, a woman's chance of pregnancy plummets to 1 or 2 percent.
Why the steep drop-off? Silber says it's all about the eggs. From the time you reach puberty, with your eggs numbering between 300,000 and 400,000, you'll lose about 13,000 eggs a year. Over the years this steady drop in egg supply will leave you with about 25,000 eggs by age 37. At 37 comes a precipitous drop in fertility. "By age 43, you're really at the end of your egg supply," Silber says, "and your chances of pregnancy are slim."
Miscarriage rates begin to skyrocket in your 40s as well. From age 40 to 44, the rate is 34 percent, and it rises to 53 percent for women 45 and older (compared to 10 percent at age 20 and 12 percent at age 30).
A woman trying to get pregnant has a 1 or 2 percent chance at age 43. However, Sarah Palin was not trying to get pregnant, so her chances are a bit less than that. There was also a 40% -50% chance of her having a miscarriage if she did become pregnant.
Note too that fertility declines with male age: “Researchers found it takes up to five times as long for a man over 45 to get a woman pregnant than if he was under 25. [viii]” Todd Palin was 44 when his wife became pregnant. Thus it was about five times more likely that 17 year old Levi Johnson would have a son than Todd Palin.
Taking all this into account, the odds were probably more than 50 times greater that a 16 year old daughter would become pregnant and have a child than her 43 year old mother. If we divide this 50X greater chance of having a child by the 25X less chance that it would be born with Down Syndrome, we get the result that a 16 year old is still at least two times more likely to get pregnant and have a baby with Down Syndrome than a 43 year old.
15. Andrew Sullivan's Request for Sarah Palin’s Medical Records Denied
Andrew Sullivan has been perhaps the only nationally recognized journalist to ask for some proof that Sarah Palin is Trig’s mother. He has gotten no responses from the McCain-Palin campaign to his repeated requests. Howie Kurtz, a Washington Post media critic asked, “Why not release the hospital records and put this matter to rest?”
The response was “"Governor Palin has no history of health problems," Goldfarb says. "We believe that a candidate should be able to preserve some privacy in this process, and we're confident the American people will validate that judgment come election day. [ix]"
This does not make sense. If Palin does not have any history of health problems, then why not release the medical records to stop a major national reporter from continuing to repeat a theory that the campaign calls nonsense.
Sullivan responded
So the only objective evidence we will be allowed to have about Palin's medical history, including the bizarre story of her fifth pregnancy, is Michael Goldfarb's assurance that she has "no history of health problems" and that "privacy" trumps even basic transparency and accountability in a national campaign. For the record, I agree with Sarah Palin who recently said,
"When you run for office, your life is an open book.[x]"
16. At Least Four Independent Sources of Rumors Before the Birth.
One might suppose that it was only after the bizarre events of Sarah Palin’s birth that people started to doubt that Sarah Palin was actually pregnant. It seems that even before these events, people were talking about Bristol being pregnant and her mother covering up for her with a fake pregnancy [xi]. We have now at least four independent sources who claim that there were rumors about Bristol being pregnant before Trig’s birth. They are:
1. Bill McAlister, Sarah Palin's Press Secretary
http://community.adn.com/node/130178?page=1
2. Sue Williams, Wasilla Caterer, and Mudflats blogger
http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/off-to-the-land-of-palin/
3. Jesse, an Anchorage college student who writes under the name of Jibegod, and first wrote of the rumor on the internet in March, 2008
http://www.reddit.com/comments/6f3nq/coverup_alaska_gov_palin_r_announced_she_was/c03o1ma
4. Philip Munger, a Progressive Alaska Blog Writer
http://community.adn.com/adn/node/130178
17. National Enquirer Digs Up Something. Was Bristol Thrown Out of Her house?
According to the National Enquirer:
When Sarah found out the teen was pregnant by high schooler Levi Johnston, she was actually banished from the house. As part of the cover-up, Palin quickly transferred Bristol to another high school and made her move in with Sarah’s sister Heather 25 miles away! [xii]
We know from her aunt, Heather Bruce that Bristol went to live in Anchorage with her. If this is true, Bristol could only have been pregnant with Trig [xiii] at the time. This is confirmed by this item:
Mark Okeson, the assistant principal at Wasilla High School, told the Chicago Tribune that Bristol started her junior year last fall, in the town where Sarah Palin grew up.
He said Bristol inexplicably transferred to an Anchorage high school midyear, leaving Levi behind.
"I never heard the story why," he said [xiv].
18. Bristol Disappears, Appears, Then Disappears Again.
One cannot find any picture of Bristol Palin on the internet from January 2008 to circa July 7, 2008, when she gets photographed at the Philadelphia Zoo with her mother and Trig. Since she is the governor of Alaska’s daughter, this is very puzzling. One would expect that she would be at one official function with her mother, and/or somebody would photograph her. The majority of teenagers have cellphones with cameras. One would imagine that at least one friend or classmate would take a picture of Bristol, the governor’s daughter during the months from January to May 1st, and someone would put the picture on the internet.
Here is the first picture of Bristol Palin that I could find, after the vice-presidential announcement and before the Bristol prenancy rumors hit the internet. It is apparently from an August 29, 2008[xv] campaign rally in Ohio.
Here is another shot from the same event of Bristol showing love for her brother [xvi].
Here is a picture taken during the preparation for a photo-shoot for people magazine. Notice that Bristol is holding Trig [xvii].
Here are the pictures that made it into People Magazine. Notice who is holding Bristol for the camera [xviii].
After the Republican National Convention, on September 4th, 17 year old Bristol Palin dropped off the face of the earth. Without giving a single interview, answering a single question, or saying a single word, Bristol Palin disappeared as entirely as she had disappeared from January to August 28. There was no indication whatsoever that she was five months pregnant at the Republican National Convention. Now six months pregnant, she should be showing some signs. Yet not one photographer has won a nice fat bonus check by photographing her beginning her third trimester of pregnancy. Not even the Republican Party has released a single photo to reassure the public that the pregnancy is progressing as scheduled. They haven’t even released a shot of Bristol and Levy together and still in love. Such a picture would certainly reinforce all the warm feelings for the Palin family that gained McCain up to eight points in some polls just after the convention. Daughters Willow and Piper have accompanied Sarah Palin for the entire campaign till now.
It is certainly odd that the campaign found a use for Bristol at the convention, but now seems to find no use for her at all.
19. Sarah’s Confession:“I told Trig’s Mom and Dad…”?
This is her only interview on the reasons for hiding the pregnancy, published in People Magazine on September 4th:
Palin, who was then 43 and 13 weeks pregnant , is a staunch opponent of abortion. She kept the news to herself until husband Todd returned from a business trip three days later. "The good news is we have a boy," she tearfully told him. "But we have a challenge."
Todd's response, she tells PEOPLE: "Awesome! I'm getting another boy."
Initially Palin hid her pregnancy – and her pain – from both the public and her children, son Track, now 19, and daughters Bristol, 17, Willow, 14, and Piper, 7.
"Not knowing in my own heart if I was going to be ready to embrace a child with special needs," she reveals, "I couldn't talk about it."
On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to 6-lb., 2-oz. Trig, five weeks early. As Todd and their three daughters gathered around the bedside (Track, an Army private, listened in by phone from his base in Fairbanks), Willow said of the new arrival, "He looks like he has Down syndrome."
Palin, who says her own qualms were laid to rest "the minute [Trig] was born," felt a lump in her throat. "If he does, you know you will still love him, Willow. It'll be okay."
Willow pressed: "But why didn't you tell us?"
Palin admitted she didn't know how to break the news. "I was a little shocked," says Willow "but I don't care – he's my brother and I love him."
Notice that Palin, before telling her husband about the pregnancy, decided without consulting her husband, to have early amniocentesis done at 13 weeks. It is normally done from 15 to 18 weeks [xix]. When done earlier it increases the risks of miscarriage and complications. “The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) does not recommend early amniocentesis (before 13 weeks), because the risks for miscarriage and pregnancy complications are higher than with amniocentesis performed between 15 and 17 weeks. [xx]”
Since Palin was not going to have an abortion anyway, there was no point in her having early amniocentesis which increases the risk of miscarriage and complications.
After going through a 29 hour day of labor and giving birth, and signing a new bill into law [xxi], Sarah Palin apparently wrote an Email to her friends and relatives explaining about Trig:
After Trig was born, Palin sent relatives and close friends a letter she wrote in the voice of God.
"I let Trig's mom and dad find out before he was born that this little boy will truly be a gift," Palin wrote, signing it "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father.[xxii] "
Ignore for the moment the bizarreness of writing an email to your friends and relatives in the voice of God. We will say that the drugs she must have taken during the labor accounts for that. Notice the sentence, “I let Trig’s mom and dad find out before he was born that this little boy will truly be a gift.” If there was no signature, we could assume that Sarah Palin, the sender of the email, had told Trig’s mom and dad (Bristol and Levi) that Trig would be a gift to her. In other words, by allowing her to raise the child, they would be giving her a gift. Should we take this as Sarah’s confession? Perhaps she needed to confess, but could not reveal the truth, so she placed the revelation in the name of God, as religious people sometimes do. Perhaps, it wasn’t God who told Trig’s mom and dad to give Trig away as a gift, it was Sarah.
The first statement issued by the Palin family regarding Trig included this phrase, “we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift [xxiii]” Her repetition of the term “gift” in reference to Trig and an association again with God supports this psychoanalytical hypothesis.
20. The Travels of Sarah and Trig.
According to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the safest time for a pregnant woman to travel is during the second trimester (18-24 weeks), when she usually feels best and is in least danger of spontaneous abortion or premature labour. A woman in the third trimester should be advised to stay within 300 miles of home because of concerns about access to medical care in case of problems such as hypertension, phlebitis, or premature labour.
Sarah Palin ignored the advice not to make plane trips during her third trimester, not once or twice, but at least eleven times. Looking through newspaper articles, it was easy to find the dates that Sarah Palin showed up in different places, but difficult to know exactly which day she traveled there. The dates may be off by one or two days. Based on newspaper articles, these are the trips that Palin took after she was 6 1/2 months pregnant.
Circa Feb. 23: flys from Anchorage to Washington D.C., 3370 miles
Circa Feb 26: flys from Washington D.C. to Anchorage,3370 miles
Circa March 2: flys from Anchorage to Los Angeles, 2302 miles
Circa March 5: flys from Los Angeles to Anchorage, 2302 miles
Circa March 7: flys from Anchorage to Fairbanks, 360 miles
Circa March 9: flys from Fairbanks to Anchorage, 360 miles
Circa March 11: flys from Anchorage to Juneau,573 miles
Circa March 14: flys from Juneau to Anchorage, 573 miles
Circa March 27: flys from Anchorage to Juneau, 573 miles
Circa April 15: flys from Juneau to Dallas, 2482 miles
April 17: flys from Dallas to Anchorage, 3051 miles
In just under two months, Palin made eleven trips, racking up over 18,000 miles.
Although, there are health risks too for infants in flying, it appears that Trig is taking after Sarah Palin. These are the minimum number of trips that Trig has taken in his five months on Earth.
Circa June 4, flys from Anchorage to Juneau, 569 miles
Circa June 10, flys from Juneau to Anchorage, 569 miles
July 7, flys from Anchorage to Philadelpha, Pennsylvania, 3367 miles
July 12, flys from Philadelphia to Anchorage, 3367 miles
June 30, flys from Anchorage to Barrow, Alaska, 723 miles
July 3, flys from Barrow to Anchorage, Alaska, 723 miles
August 28 or 29: flys from Anchorage, Alaska to Dayton, Ohio, 3081 miles
August 30: flys from Dayton to St. Paul, 584 miles
September 5: flys from St. Paul to Anchorage, 3218 miles
September 21: flys to Orlando, Florida, 3815 miles
September 23: flys to New York, 932 miles
September 30: flys from New York to Sedona, Arizona, 2080 miles
October 2: flys from Sedona, Arizona to St. Louis, Missouri 1196 mile
Cannot find where Trig was at this time, although, Sarah Palin made numerous trips.
Oct 9: flys from St. Louis, Missouri to Wilmington, Ohio, estimate 351 miles
Oct 11: flys from Wilmington, Ohio to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 270 miles
That is at least fifteen plane trips and over 25,000 flying miles for a five-six month old baby born with Down Syndrome, born one month prematurely. If Trig really is Sarah Palin’s child that would mean that he has flown a minimum of 26 times and 44,000 miles over the past eight months. One might speculate on the health risks involved in this. Does anyone know the health risks?
Palin has been criticized for using the baby as a prop and not being concerned about his health. As Suzy Shuster has written:
Why is this child up so late every time there is a camera op? Why isn't this baby sleeping in a crib or bassinet somewhere with a sleep sheep or some other sound apparatus lulling him into night-night? Is it just me or does it seem like she carts this poor child around like a living breathing example of how wonderful a mom she is?[xxiv]
Summary:
Sarah Palin introduced herself as an “average hockey Mom” at the Republican National Convention [xxv]. This implied that she was a mother who sacrificed herself for her kids. Since she has made her good mothering a public campaign issue, we have the right to examine it to see if it is true.
It appears that there is a significant amount of evidence that she has produced a deception about being Trig Palin’s mother. Although significant, the evidence is not conclusive and could be wrong. If the evidence is incorrect, and she really is Trig’s mother, then the evidence calls into question many fundamental parenting skills and suggests that she has put her own ambitions over her own children’s health, safety and welfare. Do we have the right to question that?
Here are the top twenty clues all together. For the original report on the top ten clues, go to Top Ten Clues in the "Who-Is-Trig's-Mother" Mystery
20. The Travels of Sarah and Trig.
19. Sarah’s Confession:“I told Trig’s Mom and Dad…”?
18. Bristol Disappears, Appears, Then Disappears Again.
17. National Enquiry Digs Up Something. Was Bristol Thrown Out of Her house?
16. At least four independent sources of Rumors Before the Birth.
15. Andrew Sullivan's Request for Sarah Palin’s Medical Records Denied
14. Chances Are
13. Mercedes Johnson’s Strange Pictures
12. Pictures of a Not-so Pregnant Sarah, Two Weeks Before the Birth
11. No Maternity Leave
10. No Announcement of Trig’s Birth at Matsu Hospital
9. No Witnesses at Hospital 8. No Baby Pictures of Birth
7. Extraordinary Risks and A Doctor’s Responsibility
6. A Doctor’s Specialty: Teenagers in Trouble
5. The Invisible Pregnancy or “Where are You Carrying This Baby? In Your Pocket?”
4. The Daughter Disappears From School
3. Five Months: Perfect Timing to Confuse the Issue
2. Bristol Under the Bus
1. Accumulation of evidence.
I recommend the blog http://www.palindeception.com/blog/ for the latest information and evidence on this story.
[i] http://www.cftech.com/BrainBank/HUMANRESOURCES/FamandMedLve.html, http://community.adn.com/mini_apps/vmix/player.php?ID=1837061&GID=118, see 2:20 mark
[ii] http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/382560.html
[iii] for a list of complications from pregnancy see http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/004.htm
[iv] http://www.aafp.org/afp/990115ap/381.html
[v] http://www.zimbio.com/Bristol+Palin/articles/631/The+Smoking+Gun. http://www.palindeception.com/blog/2008/09/smoking-gun.html
[vi] http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080901140603AANIGtr
[vii] http://www.babycenter.com/0_age-and-fertility-getting-pregnant-in-your-40s_1494699.bc?page=3
[viii] http://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/news/20030626/male-biological-clock-ticking-too
[ix] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092400797.html
[x] http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/mccain-camp-no.html
[xi] I have a fifth source who wrote me privately that he had spoken to an Alaskan State Legislator who had heard from his daughter who attended school with Bristol in the Spring that Bristol was pregnant.
[xii] http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2008/09/national-enquirer-what-sarahs-really.html
[xiii] http://community.adn.com/adn/node/130240
[xiv] http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003844555
[xv] http://www.flickr.com/photos/er3465/2809207089/
[xvi] http://www.flickr.com/photos/er3465/2810096614/
[xvii] http://www.flickr.com/photos/29498869@N07/2818628778/
[xviii] http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20222685,00.html,
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20222685_2,00.html
[xix] http://www.medicinenet.com/amniocentesis/page3.htm
[xx] http://www.childrensnyp.org/mschony/P02429.html
[xxi] “Within hours of Trig's birth Palin was signing bills and BlackBerrying colleagues”. People, September 15, 2008, http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20230644,00.html
[xxii] http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/v-printer/story/518512.html
[xxiii] http://www.ktuu.com/global/story.asp?s=8194634
[xxiv] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/suzy-shuster/say-it-aint-so-trig-palin_b_131499.html
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