I'm sorry, feel free to call me crazy, but this just does not make any sense to me at all

I can't quit Sarah Palin.

Seriously, I should probably just go away and shut the fuck up as I feel as though this whole thing is slowly driving me insane, but I can't help myself, I can't make sense of this and I guess it's in my nature to try and make sense of the things I can't seem to make sense of. I also think that there are some things in life that you run across that perplex you but you let them go for the sake of just moving on, you compartmentalize these things and eventually you just forget about them completely, but this is not one of those things that I can let go of, there's too much at stake here and it's too Goddamn important. Now, since I can't seem to make sense of it on my own, I figure that maybe thinking out loud on this here blog will help me flush out some semblance of understanding, or at least spark an enlightened comment or an email from a reader that helps me to see the light. So here it goes.

Let's start with some photographic contradictions. This is a picture being circulated around now featuring an obviously pregnant Sarah Palin in April of this year that some say proves that she was pregnant with Trig...



I mean, it's obvious, right? And it's definitely not a photoshop as the the reporter doing the interview in the pic is on record as saying that Palin definitely looked pregnant in person.

Now, can someone please explain to me how a woman can go from looking so obviously pregnant in the photo above to so obviously un-pregnant in this AP photo below, taken March 9th, barely a month before she gave birth?



And then there's this widely circulated pic taken just a few weeks earlier...



Contrast that with this AP photo of Palin at seven months with her first child, Track...



And while I'm on the subject of pictures, why aren't there more photos and/or video of a visibly pregnant Sarah Palin available? In my lifetime I've lived in two states, Louisiana and New York, and during that time I don't think that a day has passed without there being a picture in the paper or a news report on television that didn't feature the governor of the state I was living in at the time. Generally, it's a pretty high profile position, thus, that person's life is pretty well documented in the public domain. Where are the mountains of visibly preggers Sarah Palin photos/video? Or how about some photos of a not pregnant Bristol Palin taken during this time, the time where she was out of school for months with an "extended case of mono."

Then there's the other thing, the main thing among many things about all of this, that I truly cannot understand for the life of me...the kooky-ass trip she took to Dallas and back in April. Let's go through this again step by step...

-Palin flies to Dallas in her 8th month of pregnancy, something that any medical professional worth his or her salt would seriously frown upon, with a special needs child inside of her.

-On April 17th, hours before she is supposed to deliver her speech, she begins to leak amniotic fluid and begins having contractions. She calls her doctor, who is NOT a perinatologist or even a run of the mill OB/GYN, but is instead a family practice doctor who specializes in CHILD ABUSE cases, who then advises this 44 year old woman carrying a special needs child to go ahead and give her speech and then jump on a plane back to Alaska.

-Palin gives her speech. No one is on record, that I have seen anyway, as saying that they noticed that she was a pregnant woman in labor at the conference.

-Palin takes an Alaskan Airlines flight back to Anchorage, stopping off in Seattle along the way. She fails to notify any Alaskan Airlines personnel that she is pregnant, or that she that she's a pregnant woman WHO HAS GONE INTO FREAKING LABOR, nor does any of the Alaskan Airlines staff even notice that she is pregnant. In doing all of this she bypasses the opportunity to birth the child in two major American cities with world class health facilities, risking the lives of the baby and herself in the process. She gets into Anchorage nine hours later at 10:30 PM where, rather than go directly to one of the hospitals in the immediate area, she drives an hour outside of town to the Mat-Su medical center, a facility that doesn't even have a neo-natal ICU and where her doctor isn't listed as a staff member. Despite the fact that she is leaking amniotic fluid, the doctor induces labor, on a premature special needs child mind you, and she gives birth 18 1/2 hours later. The record of the child's birth is completely omitted from the hospital's website.

-Three days later, Sarah Palin returns to work.

Now, here's where my sanity will come into question as I throw out three of the most common things that some people I know have speculated upon through hushed whispers in private conversations and in other outposts on the Internet, that actually have been festering inside of my wee Cajun brain. Here we go...

-About the picture above where she looks so pregnant in contrast to others where she does not, not to mention that there seems to be an odd lack of photographs in which Palin, someone in the public eye, is visibly pregnant, some seem to think that she is wearing something, some sort of pregnancy fat suit, underneath.

-Due the fact that Palin's doctor is one of the foremost experts on child abuse in the state of Alaska, some have speculated that something incestual may have been at play here, which might also explain the extreme desire to keep the whole thing covered up.

-In the wake of the announcement that Bristol is presently pregnant, some have speculated that it's a ruse to throw people off, and that she'll suffer a mysterious miscarriage in the near future.

I know, I know, all of this is patently absurd, like something straight out of a cheesy political novel, but here's the thing that I keep coming back to in my mind when taking all of this in in its totality...Never underestimate the lengths that a person on a delusional power trip will go to maintain and expand that power, nor should you underestimate the lengths that a mother will go to in order to protect her children. Rarely does anything nutty done by a human being surprise me any more.

But they seem like such a sweet family. It tears at me inside to even consider such things. Regardless, even if all of this is completely disproved, and I genuinely hope that it is, the kooky flight from Dallas to Alaska freaks me the fuck out, so much so that the idea of having someone whose thought process works like hers does anywhere near the White House is completely unacceptable.

And oh yeah, there are a couple of videos available online from the late stages of Palin's pregnancy as well...

The Sarah Palin interview in the video below took place in March of this year, one month before she gave birth to her youngest son Trig. This would have made her seven months pregnant at the the time. In it, she leads the interviewer from the Alaska Podshow on a mini-tour of the town, taking him along on her daily trek from the Governor's Mansion to the State House, walking speedily along in high heels while sipping coffee, something she says is part of her daily ritual. The major point of dialogue, for me anyway, comes when the interviewer asks Palin about her hobbies. This was her response...

"I like running the hills. It kills me. It thrashes your guts, and your lungs, and your thighs so that's why I like it."

It should be noted that at no point in the interview did the issue of pregnancy arise. The point where she enters is right about the four minute mark, and the more close up shots come when she is standing stationary come in the latter part of the interview, which takes place in her office.

I watched this twice looking very hard for any sort of midsection bump and can't find one. Let me know if you do.


Juneau, Alaska | Hike w/ Gov. Sarah Palin from Alaska HDTV on Vimeo.

This one is of Sarah Palin being interviewed by Newsweek's Karen Breslau at the magazine's Women & Leadership Event in Los Angeles back in March. Two days after this event, Palin would announce her pregnancy. So the question is...does a woman in her seventh month of pregnancy carrying a normal sized child sit like this?



Even Diddy agrees that this is all so preposterous...



I wonder if he's seen this flow chart...

(click to enlarge)


Finally, please save all of your email blasting me as being a "liberal blogger" and a "pawn for the Democratic Party," as some have done over the last 48 hours or so. Nothing could be further from the truth, which is that I'm a lifelong Republican, albeit one currently mired in a profound disenchantment with what that party has become over the last few years. What I am is someone with an open mind who doesn't vote along strict party lines and who hasn't sipped any political party's Kool-Aid. Fact of the matter is, the current Republican regime has run the country into the ditch, and I frankly don't trust them to drive it out of said ditch. I think that John McCain is a good man, he was actually my guy in 2000 before he was fucked over by Karl Rove's slime machine, but the John McCain of 2008 is not the John McCain of 2000. Same goes for the Republican Party at large. Sarah Palin on the ticket as the VP nominee only serves to affirm that belief.

Stay tuned for more in this ongoing saga...


(via Gawker)