The “other thing” being reported about Sarah Palin (UPDATED)

I don’t know if it’s true…but there’s a lot of weird shit surrounding the birth of Palin’s latest child, and whoa, damn, if it does turn out to be true, then McCain’s campaign is lost, considering the fact that one of Sarah Palin’s only supposed qualifications is that she’s so “pro-life” she can’t see straight.

Like I said, I’m reserving my judgment at this point.

UPDATE: Okay, the McCain-Palin campaign really does need to address these questions. At first, I thought, “Okay, slow down, let’s not be right-wingers about this…” But this is weird. And it seems the campaign could answer these questions so simply…

Here’s the chronology of Sarah Palin’s alleged pregnancy if you haven’t seen it.

UPDATE II: She looks pregnant here.

UPDATE III: Brilliant Amelia put things in perspective in the comments, and I want to share it with you:

If the baby is Sarah’s, then all of the horrible judgment calls (documented by the press) regarding the flight from Texas, the layover in Seattle, bypassing the well-equipped Anchorage hospital that could cater to a special needs, month-premature child whose mother was leaking amniotic fluid and risking infection for hours and hours…in favor of a small-time clinic in her hometown…this is not a woman who one would use as a poster child for Good Judgment Lady.

If the baby is Bristol’s, and this child was conceived via consentual sex as an accident, this could be a direct result of Sarah Palin’s Anti-Birth Control stance. I’m not saying pack your daughter’s handbag full of condoms, but it’s a very big drop off of one’s high horse when this happens at home, yes?

And if, God Forbid, Bristol was the victim of a sexual assault, and Sarah Palin forced her to carry to term (because as Sarah Palin has said, she is anti-abortion even in cases of rape or incest, and that would apply to her own daughter), then Sarah Palin, as far as I’m concerned, basically raped her daughter a second time, victimizing her to force her to carry the child, and live a lie in the process. In the public eye, no less.

Now, it seems Sarah Palin was indeed pregnant. Still no word on whether Bristol was/is, but I’ve been showing those pictures to women who have been pregnant, and they’ve all said, “yeah, she’s preggers.”

So, we’ll see…

UPDATE IV: Okay Bristol Palin, 17, is indeed pregnant, and in an alarming show of stupidity, will be marrying the father. However, that is her choice, and, it seems, Sarah & Todd Palin are allowing her to make that choice. While many of us wil shake our heads at the naivete that would lead a person to believe that, at 17, marriage “for the sake of the child” is the best option, now that the questions seem to be answered, it’s probably time to drop this. It is, after all, a private matter, and we are not right-wingers. We asked some questions, they seem to be answered. So, that’s enough.

UPDATE V: A good point made at Sadly, No! about this whole thing:

The there wasn’t the exact there some thought was there, but this shows there was definitely some sort of there there.

So…the right-tards are going to try to act like this was a sort of “smear campaign,” and I will admit that the original Kos piece was accusatory and made declarative statements where I wouldn’t have. HOWEVER, on this blog, on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, and on many others, we were asking questions rather than making accusations. And now we know the truth, which immediately differentiates us from right-tard morons who still believe (insert stupid debunked rumor here) about Barack Obama.

UPDATE VI: Bringing the focus of this story back where it should be, on John McCain’s and Sarah Palin’s poor judgment:

I realize the gist of the story has been lost in a murk of rumormongering, but let’s not ignore one basic fact: Sarah Palin was, and could have remained, an obscure governor of a small state — but she chose to become one of the most famous, and thus most scrutinized, women in America at a time when she knew her unmarried seventeen-year-old daughter was pregnant.

What the hell is wrong with her? What the hell is wrong with her husband? What the hell is wrong with John McCain?

This is a judgment issue. It’s not unlike what John Edwards did, when he put himself forward as a presidential candidate knowing his infidelity was there to be exposed — was he crazy? He thought he could conceal the story. Maybe Sarah Palin did too. But now she’s exposed her daughter to this scrutiny, all because she has an excessive desire to be a political star.

Emphasis mine.

UPDATE VII: More on what’s relevant about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, and what decidedly is not, from Pharyngula:

The issues here should not be “OMG her daughter is pregnant out of wedlock”, but “What are the candidates proposed policies for dealing with the issue of teen pregnancy?” That Palin’s daughter is pregnant should not be of any concern to either campaign; that Palin’s policies of an active maintenance of reproductive ignorance are manifest failures is.

UPDATE VIII:

Pharyngula also links to policy statements made by Sarah Palin when she was running for governor. This one is particularly poignant:

3. Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?

SP: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.

I know from my own experience growing up around sheltered Christian girls that they still had sex, but were less likely to know the ins-and-outs (har har) of protecting themselves and the like. They still had sex, but they didn’t use condoms. They still had sex, but they weren’t taught that, bluntly, you can get pregnant even if he pulls out, that the Michael Phelps sperm get there long before the others. So, did Sarah Palin give her daughter a real sex talk? Who knows? But she supports withholding information from children whose parents may or may not teach them correct information on their own. I hate that Bristol is personally being put in the spotlight here, but perhaps this is a good object lesson for arch-conservatives who believe against all evidence and common sense that they can teach kids to keep their pants on through the power of Jesus. Maybe they need to see, without euphemisms, without girls being spirited away to the proverbial aunt’s house in a town far away, the results of withholding the facts from their kids.

UPDATE IX: Okay, okay, okay, look, people — this is the last update I’m making on this post. Sarah at Jezebel, definitely a compatriot in teaching real sex ed and a true pro-choicer (both choices, as she reminds us) laid the smack down, and I think everybody needs to read it.

We wish Bristol Palin all the best. Now back to the other eleventy gazillion reasons her mother shouldn’t be vice-president…