Joe McGinniss puts it all on the line with "The Rogue."

"Stop reading this review! Stop it I say! The only truth is my truth, everything else is a lie!"

Now you are going to read a lot of reviews about The Rogue, that will be rife with spoilers and chock full of all of the best parts, like a movie preview that contains every important scene resulting in the actual viewing of the movie to be almost anti-climatic.

This review will NOT be one of those.

But I will tell you this.  Joe McGinniss does not hold back in this book. And in fact takes a rather stunning, and potentially reputation damaging risk.

And he does it for all of you.

Perhaps its best if I start at the beginning.

When Joe came to Alaska that summer in 2010, he asked to meet me for coffee on only his second day in our fair state.  We met at the Starbucks only about five minutes from my house, where we had a rather interesting conversation.

During that talk Joe asked me to explain why I continued to pursue Babygate.

You know that is one of those conversations that I am always hesitant to engage in with people, because I am never sure how they will respond. But Joe asked, so I carefully laid out my case.

Looking back on it now I believe that Joe was just trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. (Later I learned that a number of journalists and authors had been warned to steer clear of me.) Apparently Joe determined that I was not only NOT crazy, but that my questions concerning Palin's birth story with Trig were more than valid.

However he also informed me that if I expected him to pursue that topic I needed to find him people willing to talk about it, preferably with documentation or eyewitness accounts to share.

I want you to know that I did my level best.  I made phone calls, I sent e-mails, and I even went out to Wasilla to meet some of these people face to face.

But I failed.

Even after Joe left Alaska he said "Jesse I need something more than what I found up there."  So I tried some more, and  essentially ran off people who had once claimed repeatedly to be willing to talk to "the right journalist or author."  (If freaking Joe McGinniss was not "the right author" who in the hell were they waiting to interview them?)

But as you know I kept digging.  Sadly some of my more explosive posts on the topic occurred AFTER Joe had already submitted his manuscript. And still they did not really represent what could be considered concrete proof that she had faked that pregnancy.

So when I received my copy of Joe's book I did not expect much about babygate to be addressed. (I would be proven wrong about that.)

Essentially Joe decided to write a book that is more or less two books in one.

One book is all about Sarah Palin, and her upbringing, politics, and the celebrity status that she enjoys today. The other book is about Joe's experiences as the "most hated neighbor in America."

All through the book Joe weaves back and forth between these two narratives, using the incidents that happened to him in 2010 to illustrate what makes people so afraid to speak out about the Palins, and then revisiting Sarah's life story to better understand why she and Todd react to perceived adversity the way that they do. As well as how a lack of consequences in the past reinforced their vindictive natures today.

In the hands of a less gifted writer this could have been a confusing mishmash of conflicting timelines and seemingly unrelated pieces of information, but Joe knits the two narratives together almost seamlessly.

Essentially we learn, just like we did in Geoffrey Dunn's book, that Sarah Palin uses people up like tissue paper and casts them aside with virtually NO thought to how they might be affected by her callousness. And if anybody dares to challenge her right to treat them like garbage, Todd steps in and essentially intimidates them into accepting their fate without argument.

The level of anger that has built up over the years from taking this abuse, can best be illustrated by the rather unbelievable number of guns offered to Joe while he is staying next door to the Palins. (I cannot help but wonder if at least a few of these friendly Wassilians were not harboring a secret fantasy that Joe WOULD actually feel the need to use one of these firearms and forever remove the Palin plague from their lives forever. I know that seems harsh, but I have spoken to several of their neighbors who feel a great deal of animosity toward that family, and I do not see it as being out of the realm of possibilities.)

Despite the fear that Palin seems to instill in people, Joe manages to conduct a number of "on the record" interviews, with the participants agreeing to allow Joe to use their full names in his book. These include Wasilla resident Catherine Mormile, ex-Wasilla Mayor John Stein, Rev. Howard Bess, and Palin's former Head of Security Gary Wheeler. (More on Gary later.)

As most of us would expect the book also contains a number of interviews with people who would rather NOT be named in the book. However it is a hard case to make that THEIR anonymous information is any more damaging than the information provided by those willing to stick their necks out.

Essentially the information, whether anonymous or with names firmly attached, harmoniously blends together like colors sharing the same palette, to paint a picture of Sarah Palin that is clearly defined and altogether disturbing.

In one of my favorite interviews in the book Joe manages to get one of Palin's so called "friends" to speak to him, though oddly she also demands anonymity.

This person claims to have known Sarah for fifteen years, though it appears that she has really only had minimal contact with Palin mostly consisting of attending the same aerobics class and through a "Christmas ornament exchange" that Palin stopped attending several years ago. This interviewee did not have any real conversations with Sister Sarah, and in fact barely knows the woman, but hey at least ONE person does not hate the Palin family in Wasilla! (Though this poor woman laments the fact that she never received a card from Sarah when her father died, she also insists that Joe write down that Palin always "deals with stress with grace and dignity." Poor little Zombie rat!)

Anyhow you will read more about all of that in the many reviews still to be written about "The Rogue," as well as from Joe himself during his numerous upcoming interviews this week and next. So lets' move on to the reason that you all really wanted to read MY review.

What does Joe address concerning "babygate?" As it turns out, far more than any of us could have expected.

Throughout Chapter Nineteen Joe does not actually SAY that he does not believe Palin's version of events, but through quotes from Andrew Sullivan buoyed up by the suspicions of those that know her that she pulled a fast one, he leaves little doubt that he finds the whole thing virtually impossible to swallow.

At one point Joe addresses the fact that her flight to and from Dallas was the ONLY ONE ON WHICH HER SECURITY STAFF DID NOT ACCOMPANY HER. And in case you are a little slow on the uptake as to the reason why that was the case, her Head of Security Gary Wheeler lays out what would have transpired if he HAD flown with her: "if he'd been there and her water had broken at 4:00 AM on April 17, he would have whisked her to a Dallas hospital as soon as possible, and certainly wouldn't have let her fly to Alaska twelve hours later!" Of course he wouldn't. No reasonable person who cared about the Governor's well being would.

All in all when you see Palin's version of events presented in black and white, in an actual book written by a well known and highly regarded author, it quite literally defies all logic.

I am of the opinion that if anybody who was NOT a dyed in the wool Palin-bot were to read that chapter they would throw the book down in disgust afterward and proclaim, "The bitch lied!"

Which brings me to what I perceive as the heroism of Joe McGinniss.

Joe did not HAVE to address the pregnancy issue in his book, and doing so opens him up to a barrage of attacks from the mainstream media as well as what remains of  Palin's ardent supporters.  Leaving it out would certainly not have hurt sales, considering the rather salacious tidbits that are contained within its pages, and it is doubtful that including it will result in that many more sales either

In Frank Bailey's book he made excuses for why Palin did not appear pregnant.

Nick Broomfield, though he interviewed me for over an hour on the topic, seems to have avoided it completely.

To his credit Geoffrey Dunn addresses the "Wild Ride" head on but carefully avoids slanting his coverage one way or the other.

So WHY did Joe take the risk, when so many before him had avoided it like the plague?

My opinion?  He did it for his friend Andrew Sullivan. I'd like to think he did it for me. I KNOW he did it for you. And he did it because it was the right thing to do and SOMEBODY had to do it!

And because Joe took such a risk with his reputation, with his career, and, let's face it, with the sales of his book, he has very graciously teed up this subject in such a way that it is now positioned perfectly for Fred to come in with his book, focused solely on "babygate" and the media's malpractice in not covering it, and knock it right out of the ball park.

In my opinion heroism like that needs to be rewarded, so if you have not ordered your copy of The Rogue, please do so now.  I seriously doubt that you will be disappointed.

The Wild Ride, Palin-bots, and the importance of reading comprehension.

"Good job helping with the smoke and mirrors, there Frank!"

Somebody alerted me today that there was some a NEW revisionist history being discussed over at the Sea O'Pee, excerpted from a  new Sarah Palin fanzine written by somebody named Frank Aquila.

I took a deep breath and took the plunge, where I discovered this:

Within days of my research of Governor Palin, and my consideration of other possible candidates as choices for the McCain ticket, Trig Palin was born on April 18, 2008. Sarah had been in Texas as the keynote speaker at an energy conference. She began to experience labor pains, but continued to finish her important speech. She contacted her current doctor, who had also delivered her daughter Piper. Sarah caught an Alaska Airlines flight from Dallas to Anchorage, with a stop in Seattle, where she was examined by doctors before returning to Alaska to deliver Trig. Sarah would later say, ”I am not a glutton for pain and punishment. I would have never wanted to travel had I been fully engaged in labor.” Either way, Sarah has always taken the unconventional road and, even if she does not admit it herself, she is one tough lady.

"What?" I began thinking.   "Is this some new attempt to rewrite history by the Sarah in anticipation that Joe and Fred's book  will bring her whole crazy story out to be examined by a new, heretofore unaware, audience?"

And then I got excited, because that would mean they were in a panic, and making a really stupid mistake by changing a very well known story after all of these years. As well as introducing new medical personnel who we could then attempt to contact in order to question their involvement. Of course we would fail to locate this "doctor" because, as we all know, Sarah was not pregnant and had no need to see doctor during that flight.

But then I began to wonder if even Sarah Palin would make a mistake this careless. After all of this time it did not make much sense.

And then I suddenly realized where Aquila had come up with his new version of events.

Actually it was not new at all. It was, in fact, from the earliest known version of the incident which we now refer to as the "Wild Ride."

Journey with me now to the wayback machine, to an ADN story from April 22, 2008.

Palin kept in close contact with Baldwin-Johnson. The contractions slowed to one or two an hour, "which is not active labor," the doctor said. 

"Things were already settling down when she talked to me," Baldwin-Johnson said. Palin did not ask for a medical OK to fly, the doctor said. 

"I don't think it was unreasonable for her to continue to travel back," Baldwin-Johnson said. 

So the Palins flew on Alaska Airlines from Dallas to Anchorage, stopping in Seattle and checking with the doctor along the way. 

"I am not a glutton for pain and punishment. I would have never wanted to travel had I been fully engaged in labor," Palin said. After four kids, the governor said, she knew what labor felt like, and she wasn't in labor. 

Sound familiar?  Except, as anybody with reading skills can discern, the article refers to Palin checking with Baldwin-Johnston, "the doctor" in this scenario, and NOT a Seattle based doctor during her layover.

Clearly THIS is the story that Aquila used as his "research" into Palin's delivery of Trig.

Only his lack of reading comprehension, possibly combined with his difficulty imagining anybody NOT checking in with a Seattle doctor if they were in labor, inspired him to create an entirely new scenario where Palin visited a medical professional before continuing on to Anchorage, and from there all the way to the Mat-Su Regional Hospital, where the "birth" took place.

But just to be clear the ONLY doctor that Sarah Palin was able to manipulate into putting their medical career in jeopardy to help her to fake this birth was Catherine Baldwin-Johnson. A woman who traded away every ounce of her integrity, and now lives the life of a virtual hermit, in service to a woman who abandoned her to her fate without even a glance backward once she had served her purpose.

As one time friend Catherine Mormile describes in "The Rogue:"She recruits those who feel worthless and powerless and uses them as tools. Lyda Green and I call them Zombie rats."

Pretty much sums it up, don't you think.

And this Frank Aquila is just the most recent Zombie rat, in a long line of Zombie rats,  to attempt to provide cover for a woman who would not even bother to piss on him if he were being consumed by flames right in front of her.

More tidbits from "The Rogue."

Here are a few of the juicier portions courtesy of Joe McGinniss interview on Slate.com:

The juiciest quotes and stories in The Rogue come from anonymous sources, but McGinniss says he nixed "90 percent of the anecdotes I heard," sticking to the ones he could confirm. 

McGinniss reports that the Palins told the original owner (Of the house that Joe rented) that they were going to cut a path through her property. "Todd told her, very plainly, that Sarah was mayor and they could do whatever they wanted, and it would be a mistake for her to try and stop them." The Palins even put up a fence with the ugly back side facing the neighbor's house. 

One friend recalls that Sarah wasn't much in the kitchen when she married Todd. "She can't cook shit. She couldn't do grilled cheese. She'd burn water." John Bitney, the husband of a woman who took care of Palin's kids, notes that when Todd was out, "I'd walk into that kitchen and Bristol and Willow would be sitting there with a burnt pot of Kraft Mac and cheese on the stove and they'd be trying to open one of those Ramen noodle packs, and Sarah would be up in her bedroom with the door closed saying she didn't want to be disturbed." 

On the governor's own diet: "One day she came in with Oreos, bread, bags of fast food, and she ate everything and then disappeared and came out of the bathroom later with blurry eyes, her hair up, and her knuckles red." 

Another friend says that Track Palin joined the army on the advice of his father: "You're gonna do this because you owe us. This is gonna look good for us and you're gonna do it." The state trooper who drove Track and Sarah to the enlistment office tells McGinniss that "there was quite a lot of emotion in the back seat of that car, but patriotism was not one of the emotions." (Joe also confirms Mercede's version of Track's enrollment as having been done to get him out of the way while Sarah was the Governor of Alaska.)

In high school, a classmate claims, Palin liked to sleep in the nude, because "she said it wasn't healthy for girls to sleep with clothes on." Later on, Palin's rivals in her first mayoral race claim she spread rumors of them acting luridly in a step-aerobics class, telling the instructor that she felt uncomfortable because they were "ogling her butt." 

I will also report a little tidbit from MY reading concerning Sarah and Todd's sex life, which just as Levi reported two years ago, is virtually non-existent. Joe also includes a quote that I have heard attributed to Todd numerous times of "Well I know I had sex at least four times, because I have four kids."

And that was BEFORE Sarah's "pregnancy" with Trig.

I have paged ahead a little to see what awaits me, and though Joe does not DEFINITIVELY state that Palin faked her pregnancy, he gives the bizarre circumstances surrounding the "delivery" at Mat-Su Hospital and the fact that people close to her have serious doubts, PLENTY of space in the book.

In other words there is no way this will NOT keep coming up as a topic of discussion on talk shows and during interviews.

Let me close this post out by offering up today's Doonesbury comic.

And by also providing a link to the Mike Tyson interview about Palin and Glen Rice that everyone is discussing. But let me warn you that THIS is quite raunchy! So if you have any doubts about not being offended, DO NOT click the link!

In case I have been too vague in the past let me just say definitely that YES you need to buy and read this book!

McGinniss is a very gifted writer, and even if this were NOT about Sarah Palin it would still be a fascinating book to read. But since it IS about her, that just makes it all the more satisfying.

Afterbirth: Examining the other end of Sarah Palin's inexplicable pregnancy.

So we all know that Sarah Palin simply did NOT look pregnant even weeks before supposedly giving birth on April 18, 2008, as indicated by this picture taken on March 26, 2008.

And we also know that she somehow managed to balloon up to a much more acceptable size for a woman claiming to be almost eight months pregnant only two weeks later, as indicated by this picture from April 13, 2008.

And of course we have NO earthly idea how such a dramatic weight gain can be explained.

Okay well maybe we do.

However what I have never really explored is the dramatic weight LOSS that Sarah Palin seems to have experienced AFTER the "birth" of Trig. Yes, believe it or not, Sarah Palin is SUCH an amazing woman that not only did her pregnancy not show until right around the time that Trig was ready for solid foods, but she also managed to get right back down to her canned food throwing weight even faster!

At least that is what I had been told.  Finding pictures to prove it has been a little more challenging.

I did have this one from May 3rd, of Sarah and our good friend Mercede. But people kept saying that even though her legs look skinny, and she is bending over in a way that women who just gave birth fifteen days earlier simply should NOT be able to bend over, that you could not really tell anything definitive because the loose fitting sweatshirt kept you from seeing her postpartum. Oookay.

So I am assuming that if I had a picture from earlier that same day in which you COULD see her stomach that it might prove to the naysayers that she lost her "pregnancy" weight much too fast to be explained by 21st century science, right?

Will this do? This is from earlier the same day at the VFW Post in Mountain View.

Does that look two weeks postpartum to you?

What?  Too hard to see?  Here let me help.

Is that better?

You know she looks pretty darn slim to me, how about all of you?

But that is just one picture, hardly concrete evidence right?

So here is Palin only twelve days later, on May 15, 2008.

Right about here is where all of the Palin-bots come rushing over to say things like "Aw c'mon Gryphen!  Aren't you reaching a little? Why I had a girlfriend/wife/ co-worker/pet basset hound who lost all of THEIR baby weight in just a matter of days!  Perhaps Sarah Palin is just somebody who, due to her tight abs and dedication to running that nobody ever sees her do, is able to snap right back into shape. I am really a fan but THIS time I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Now if you will excuse me I have to call SarahPAC and get my check."

Well I am not an expert on pregnancy, but I do know that people don't usually "snap back into shape" faster with their fifth pregnancy than they did with their fourth pregnancy. (So you know what's coming right?)

The above is a picture of Sarah Palin from April 15, 2001, almost exactly one month after giving birth to future Palin family bodyguard, Piper Palin. Gee I guess her abdomen took a little bit longer to "snap back" in those days.

So let me see if I have this straight.

Sarah Palin suddenly announces to the world that she is pregnant on March 5, 2008 to the surprise of every single one of her co-workers, the journalists who constantly follow her around, her security staff, her entire family, and (if my sources are accurate) Todd Palin himself.

Then she starts wearing heavy jackets and long scarves making it hard to tell, if I may borrow a quote from Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Caroline Boren, "the stage of her pregnancy by observation."

However she seems to remain relatively thin until April 13th, when she suddenly balloons up just five days before "giving birth," which occurs only after she has been leaking amniotic fluid for almost eighteen hours and flown on a commercial airline from Texas all the way to Alaska.

Afterwards she simply leaves the hospital and resumes wearing her pre-pregnancy wardrobe as if nothing ever happened.

As if NOTHING ever happened.

So essentially Sarah Palin's ENTIRE pregnancy is encapsulated in this one GIF.

If GIF does not work, try clicking on it.

Have you EVER seen a pregnancy that even remotely compares to the Sarah Palin pregnancy?

And if you haven't (And believe me I KNOW you haven't) then what is the ONLY possible explanation?

Mudflats is a MUST read today. Update: Palin QUITS Iowa speech!

If you have not been there yet, I suggest that you do not delay as it has confirmation of many of the stories about the Palins that we have been hearing for a long time. (Just click here to visit.)

They do not say anything too revelatory about babygate (If Frank actually knows the truth, as has been suggested, then it appears he did not share it, or swore Jeanne and Ken to secrecy), but it does suggest what others in her inner circle thought might be the reason she was so tiny throughout her pregnancy.

The claim that Sarah was never actually pregnant with her special needs child Trig—a widely circulated rumor that became known as “Babygate”—was partially based on Sarah shocking the world by announcing her pregnancy at seven months. Prior to that, nobody had suspected a thing. The revelation was even a surprise to staff, Frank Bailey, and the media. Even State Senator (and, according to Sarah and staff an evil-doer) Lyda Greene incredulously said, “It’s wonderful. She’s very well disguised. When I was five months pregnant, there was absolutely no question that I was with child.” 

How did Sarah manage to hide that pregnancy for so long? That question seemed to defy explanation to all except a small number of personal insiders who expressed alarming speculation. During her pregnancy with Piper (and it was suggested later with Trig), Todd asked a friend whom he thought knew about such matters, “As unhealthy as her eating is, what can those diet pills do to the baby?” 

The friend explained to him, “I’m not sure, but I’d be concerned about having a failure-to-thrive child.” (Failure to thrive is where there is a significant interruption in the expected growth rate during early childhood and can result from malnutrition). Was Sarah so vain as to try and hide her pregnancy and prolong her petite, almost perfect figure through drastic means? It’s a proposition that shocked everyone, including, reportedly, her husband.

This might have been something that was discussed by people with no understanding of pregnancy but as many of you can probably already surmise for yourselves, the diet pills might help to keep most of a soon-to-be-mother's body slim, the baby is still growing inside of her, and it would in fact look even MORE pronounced against an emaciated frame.

And as you can see from these two pictures taken on March 26, 2008, Palin did NOT appear nearly as skinny as we see her today, nor does she appear pregnant. She might have been taking diet pills at this time, but it in NO WAY explains the oddness of the square pillow in her belly.

Nor does it explain how she ballooned up to to her April 13 size in just a few weeks.

However we were to desperately cling to that explanation instead of admitting the truth that should be obvious to everybody who saw her then you would have expected  Trig to have been equally as emaciated when he emerged from his starvation period in the womb, and as you can see by pictures of the child presented as Trig by the Heaths on the day of his "birth" such was not the case.

Like I said, binging and purging, and pounding down diet pills does not adequately explain this bizarre "pregnancy."

I don't know why this is still being trotted out as a possible excuse by people who I am relatively certain do not buy into it, but I think most people, who are NOT trying to protect Palin's birth mythology, are well aware of what the overwhelming evidence demonstrates.

Having said that I still suggest that you head on over to the Mudflats and read the article as it is chock full of information about Todd and Sarah's battles, Sarah's lack of parenting skills, and her crazy mood swings.

Update: Okay I have no reason to think this is related to the Mudflats post, but Palin just quit her September 3, Iowa speech. Courtesy of Politico:

Sarah Palin canceled her Saturday appearance at a tea party rally in Indianola, Iowa, a person close the former Alaska governor told The Wall Street Journal. 

The person cited “continual lying” from event organizers at Tea Party of America, including a recent mixup over whether former U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell of Delaware would also speak. 

Okay Sarah Palin quit because of "lying?" Ouch! The irony makes my head hurt!

Please, we all know she quit because the organizers had the audacity to schedule Christine O'Donnell on the same day. Palin lives by the law of the Highlander, "There can be only one!"

Of course on the plus side, there is DEFINITELY an opening for Christine O'Donnell to give a speech, and this time she does no have to worry about being tripped by that nasty old bitch as she walks off stage.

Update 2: Apparently the Teabaggers themselves have NOT been informed that her highness may not be coming. My somewhat educated guess is that SHE does not want to go, but that her "people" are flipping out that she might cancel yet again.

I am interested in how this all plays out, because it sounds to me like Palin might be having one of her manic episodes.

What do you think?  Will she show up, or not?

The National Examiner tackles Babygate. Finally!

The reporters from the National Examiner are only the latest to finally get fed up enough with this obvious fraud to finally decide to put it out there in print so that Americans can see for themselves how stupid Sarah Palin considers all of them to be. 

Interestingly enough NE is somewhat late in boarding this particular bandwagon, on which Andrew Sullivan is the senior member, though he is now somewhat less lonely having recently been joined by the likes of Laura Novak, Sarah Jones of Politicususa, Henry Blodget of the Business Insider, and even author Joe McGinniss.

And let's not forget the soon to be completed book dedicated to babygate which I have learned is right on schedule, and which, after some tidying up of loose ends and a careful vetting by the lawyers, will soon be delivered to the publishers.

Personally I am just glad that the bloggers are not the only ones doing the heavy lifting these days. After all of these years of ridicule and ostracizing from the so-called "mainstream media," it certainly feels good to blog about the research and discoveries being made on this topic by ACTUAL journalists.

Because I don't know about all of you, but I could use a nap!

Picture time!

Somebody sent me a link to Laura Novak's recent post, and I saw this very cute recent picture of Tripp and Trig being uber cute.



 Some have already mentioned that they think Trig favors Sarah, but considering what we know about the faked pregnancy that seems rather unlikely. What is very evident however is that Trig is STILL not wearing his glasses or hearing aids like he is supposed to and his crossed eyes appear to have gotten worse.

By the way seeing the boys side by side like this makes the argument that both are the offspring of a Levi and Bristol very hard to swallow.  They are both cute kids, but to me there does not appear to be a great deal of similarities between the two of them. Even putting aside the facial features that are the result of Down syndrome.

However I really DO see a striking resemblance between Tripp and Levi as a child.

Levi was a cute kid, and so is Tripp.

Others have suggested that Tripp favors his mother, which is somewhat harder to determine since she has so dramatically altered her looks as illustrated in these pictures of her arriving at Fox and Friends on June 26th.








Nice Gestapo boots Bristol!

It looks like Bristol changed her clothes before she did her softball interview, as you can see for yourself below. (This by the way is the segment where Bristol accidentally told the truth about whether or not her mother knew if she was running for President.)



Listening to Bristol bash Levi sounds even uglier now that Mercede has told us that virtually everything she says is a bunch of bullshit.

Previously unknown pictures of Levi Johnston holding Trig Palin at the Mat-Su Regional Hospital. Update!

Recently these two photos were discovered among a pile of pictures at Mercede and Sherry Johnston's home.

It is clearly a picture taken in one of the delivery rooms at Mat-Su as confirmed by THIS picture from Palingates, showing another couple with their newborn in a room that could be a carbon copy.

As you can see that is the same hideous couch, the same beige colored walls, and the same metal window frame.

Stamped on the back of these photos is the date May 13, 2008, indicating when they were developed.

According to Mercede the ONLY baby that her brother EVER visited in the hospital was little Trig. (Clarification: What Sadie meant was Trig was the ONLY baby she knew of that Levi visited in the hospital prior to May 13, 2008, when these pictures were developed. Obviously he was there when Tripp was born later in December, which is when the picture down at the bottom of this post was taken.) So now, for the first time, we have photographic evidence  that Levi was indeed at the hospital on the day that Trig was presented to the world as Sarah Palin's fifth child.

But did you notice anything about this baby?  Here take a closer look.

Does THAT look like a jaundiced premature newborn baby, only weighing a little over six pounds, to you?

Well if it doesn't, you are not alone. Mercede also felt that this baby was significantly larger than the baby that SHE held in her arms on May 3rd, only fifteen days later.

However, he looks to be much the same size as the baby held by the Chuck and Sally Heath, for the NBC reporters,

But are is my questions.

Since both of these pictures were taken at Mat-Su Regional Hospital, ostensibly on the day of Trig's "birth," why is he wearing a completely different hat and wrapped in a completely different blanket in the two sets of pictures?

Why was a premature baby with a hole in his heart, and a case of  jaundice, handed around like a little girl's babydoll only hours after his birth?

Why would a woman allow her daughter's boyfriend to sit in the delivery room and hold her newborn baby? (Especially considering this boy had stolen your child's virginity, and you had sent your daughter to live in another town to avoid him?)

In other words, just like most of the new evidence uncovered about Sarah Palin's pregnancy, these pictures actually bring up more questions than they answer.

By the way the pictures came off of Levi's camera, and were supposedly taken by Bristol.  That is essentially all that I know about them.

Your thoughts?

Update: Holy crap!  Where is the tattoo?

A very observant Bree Palin just pointed out that the "Johnston" tattoo that runs up Levi's forearm is not present in the pictures above, yet it is prominently displayed in the picture taken in the Palin's house two weeks after Trig's "birth."

WTF? Okay well fifteen days passed between the pictures taken at the hospital and ones taken on Levi's birthday, so he COULD have made a trip to the tattoo parlor during that time.  But if that is not when he received that tattoo then these pictures tell a far more interesting story than I originally thought they did. (Update: Mercede just sent me a text saying that Levi got that tattoo when he turned eighteen years old.  Which would have been the very day the picture up above was taken. I cannot speak as to WHY his tattoo is not still bandaged however. Mine bled for two days.)

Update 2: Many of you are bringing up THIS picture of Levi wearing the hospital bracelet. So let's address it shall we?

Sadie confirmed long ago that this was a picture of Levi with Tripp, and as you can see he looks significantly different than he does in the Mat-Su Hospital pictures up above. They were definitely NOT taken on the same day.  So let's put that conspiracy to rest.