Allison's Own Thoughts on the Palin / Johnston Stories

Laura Novak had intelligent posts and attracts readers who contribute to the conversation. I was inspired by her post of October 4, 2011 and the thought-provoking comments posted to put my own theories and observations down and share them. The following is the result. 

I question information that comes from Palins and from Johnstons. Yes, Mercede and Sherry, too. What did Sherry say to a British tabloid? That her son says Sarah is superwoman? She cooks and takes care of the kids and she's the governor and a hockey mom... They lie. Not saying they are bad people, just saying they have withheld and/or misrepresented.  I'm sure they have good reason.

Here are some things to consider:

* Brad Scharlott's scenario on Laura Novak's blog yesterday is very close to what I've thought, and I've studied this stuff for years. If you have not yet read that, you should. It isn't important whether you read it before or after this blog, but do find time to read it.  He and I diverge at the Ruffles comments, and I carry this forward into a discussion about Tripp, too.

*  Sarah said she found out about (or had the test that led to) the DS diagnosis on the anniversary of 1 yr in office. I looked at released documents; she had a "lunch meeting" scheduled in on her calendar that supports my theory below.

*  I theorize that Bristol was pregnant and had medical tests scheduled for that day. She was allowed to come into the office while it was "closed for lunch" - and her mother met her there.

*  The test may have been to determine paternity. Remember the "I wished the father wasn't you" statement Bristol texted to Levi in February 2009?  Perhaps the story was actually about Trig and it was 2008. I could believe it happened and  Mercede cleaned it up a little by leaving out the part about having done a paternity test and changing the date. Nothing is exactly as it's been told - that's my personal belief.

*  Back to December 2007 - Bristol was out of sight  and not at the Governor's open house. Sarah tried to cover that up with a mis-labeled picture in Going Rogue that was actually taken in 2006.

*  Perhaps the amnio contributed to early labor, but whatever the reason, I think Bristol had a small premie born in Anchorage in either late December 2007 or early January 2008.

*  Bristol moved in with Aunt Heather to be near Levi and enrolled in school in Anchorage in mid-January.  All true. 

*  With Bristol and the baby in Anchorage, Levi could visit her and his son.

*  The baby was small, Brisol didn't look postpartum, or at least not for long, and especially not to people who didn't really know her. She was seen at a hockey game in January by another kid's mom (also named Johnston) wearing "This cute little outfit", she was seen in school in January and February according to a comment on blogs, and the Principal emailed Sarah and Todd a welcome message in January.  Bristol texted/emailed her mom from the school library in February.  Bristol went to the Feb. 15 2008 luncheon as her first post-pregnancy official event.  She was back in the public, seeing Levi in both Wasilla and Anchorage, possibly working, and enrolled in school.

*  I believe the Sarah scarves were being used as a hedge against the possibility that Sarah might claim that she had the baby Bristol had given birth to prematurely. The baby had severe problems. He had Down syndrome. It wasn't clear that he was going to live.  And even if he lived, perhaps they could find him (Trig who at that time was called Tripp by Bristol) another home.  This is all conjecture, but it's based on breadcrumbs dropped along the path some of us have been on for three years.

*  Levi's book contains a comment that Bristol is like a kid who's adopted. He claims they have "relationship problems" with their parents. Really? He's given that some serious thought and come up with a theory about the problems kids have when they are adopted. Why?

*  According to Levi's book, a baby was seen by Bristol as a way to get out of the homelife she hated. This leads me to think Bristol wanted to keep baby number one, aka Tripp but changed by adoption to Trig.  Her parents would have said it would be too much work and tried to talk her out of that.

*  Levi says in his book that "Down's is no joke, especially for families who don't have the means to hire special needs experts."  Again, there was a lot of thought given to a situation that he himself was supposedly only seeing from a distance.  He also says that when Trig came home, the Palins hired someone to care for him. I think Levi bought into the Palin's "you aren't prepared to give him what he needs" argument and signed off on parental rights, but Bristol didn't.  I think she holds that over their heads - all of them.

*At this point, not knowing if their son will live, and with the pressure to give him up even if he does live, Bristol becomes desperate to have a healthy baby. She says to Levi "Let's have a baby."

* Time for me to say: Ruffles looks like all the Trigs to me. Smaller, but same person.

* I believe the Trig in Palin kitchen pics are earlier than we've been told. It wasn't Levi's birthday. Someone spotted the cake in the background and then we were told these pics were taken on Levi's birthday. We bought into that lie and have been scratching our heads ever since. How come he looks so much bigger on April 18 than in early May?  Two separate babies?  Now which is easier to believe, the baby shrank, the Palins found and borrowed a DS newborn, or people lied about the date of the picture?  I know which one I believe.

*  Maybe that cake in the background when Levi is holding Trig is for Sarah (Feb. 11 or thereabouts). 

*  This would suggest that the baby was released from the NICU in February, and remember, Levi said a care-giver was hired "when Trig came home." So, February or whenever, Bristol kept on in school and Sarah kept on working.

*  Bristol stops going to school in Anchorage in March (according to a commenter at IM long ago who had kids in Anchorage school). This is, according to my theory, the time that Bristol found out she was pregnant again. And they told everyone - Sherry, Sadie, Keith, Todd, Sarah and Willow.

*  Levi says in his book he drops out of school in March 2008,his dad was not happy about it tried to get him to stay in school and  the family would help them get through it (becoming parents - this would be the December 2008 baby). He says Todd said he had to drop out and get a job. You have to read in several places to put this together. One is pg  89, the other is 226. (The book is rife with nuggets if you dig around.)

*  To believe that Bristol and Levi told the parents about the pregnancy in March is to say everyone is lying about the early May timing of the announcement. Well, we know there are lies, right? Replace the month of March with the month of May and we might have the truth, they were all told in early March. Right around the time Sarah announced her pregnancy.

*  If Sarah found out Bristol was pregnant AGAIN, she might have made the decision to take the first baby because certainly Bristol couldn't handle two of them - all of them.  Bristol found out when she heard it on TV.

* Pure conjecture on this one, so please don't pull any IM like knives out - maybe instead of Bristol saying "My mom shouldn't be having a baby, I should,"  it was SARAH saying "Bristol shouldn't be having a DS baby, I should." And she took it. Announced it. Said and done with out "asking the kids." Just like everything else she's done that affected them but she never even consulted with them. Oooooo, there's a twist.

* Pro-Palin books have said Bristol lived with Aunt Heather while she was pregnant. If she got pregnant in Feb and knew in March, this fits.

*  Email shows that Bristol pregnancy rumors were around in March 2008. 

*  There is a person who says she was told in an email April 1st that Bristol was pregnant.

*  Willow was telling people in late March or early April that Bristol was pregnant.

*  The picture dated April 25 2008 of Bristol hugging Mercede who is going to prom is captioned by Levi as his babe (as he calls her) being two months pregnant.  Until Bristol gets pregnant, she and Mercede are rivals/enemies. If Mercede didn't know until May about the baby, why would these two be so chummy? I believe the May announcement is a lie.

I think these girls' smiles give it away.

*  Wild Ride, etc. Why on April 17-18? Don't know. May not be important. But the whole publicity thing sure got to Levi. That was his son. Sarah was getting all the attention. Sarah was dragging the kid all over the state. Levi was mad. He went hunting.

*  Then it became May and Levi had his 18th birthday. Sarah wanted to make nice.    From page 223 of DITH "...Sarah did make one meal that I can remember, for my eighteenth birthday. I was floored. She had sent one of the kids out for some fast food, and we ate that along with the moose tacos she was laying out. She had even invited my mom and Sadie. They and Bristol and I ate on the sofa; I balanced Trig on my knee while I forked in the grub. Todd was outside and Sarah disappeared into her room with a dish of food." Okay folks, there is no freaking way that itty bitty baby on Levi's chest in the picture Sadie says was this day was balanced on Levi's knee minutes later while he messed with tacos and "forked in the grub."

*  Now, it couldn't have been the tiny kitchen picture baby that he balanced on a knee while handling tacos. But maybe the bigger baby, the held-by-Sally April 18 picture baby, could be on a knee two weeks down the road, still it seems sketchy that parents would let a delicate infant be on the knee of the kid who knocked up their daughter. The kid they don't like. Leads me to think Levi's the real dad. 

*  Note that Trig's "parents" Sarah and Todd don't even stay in the room. All the more reason to be suspicious about who the birth parents are.

*   Sarah and Bristol have had plastic surgery. They care about appearances. Trig is taken to a specialist who corrects his ear deformity. Perhaps it would have given a clue as to his stage of development when he was really born.  By the time Sarah is tapped by McCain, the ears are normal looking.  The baby is profoundly deaf, so perhaps the surgery or whatever they did was not as prohibitive as it might have been if he were a hearing person? I don't know.

*  During a nationally televised interview while running on the McCain ticket, Sarah says “earform” instead of “earmark” and corrects herself without any apparent discomfort. The moment goes unnoticed even by anti-Palin bloggers.

*  Levi says in his book that Sarah did not breast feed Trig.

*  We know someone was lactating and Trig was fed mother’s milk because there are pictures taken during the campaign that show Trig’s Mendela baby bottle. One is behind the scenes at the RNC with Sarah and Bristol and Trig,  and in at least one picture (at a picnic table) the Mendela breast pump bag was spotted at the table with the pizza and the kids.

*  Levi seems to know a lot about nursing a baby. He says that Tripp “was a natural” but that Bristol said it hurt, and chose to pump instead. He was fed by bottle but it was Bristol’s milk.   Now wouldn’t an 18 yr old boy assume all babies are “natural” at feeding?  How would he know otherwise unless someone in his experience had trouble? My guess is he knew because DS kids have problems latching on. And he didn’t hear that from Sarah, who “didn’t nurse Trig.”

*  Levi is interviewed in October in his driveway. He says he’s looking forward to having “his first kid.”  Who starts counting with one? It  sounds like he’s trying too hard.  He does this in the book, too.  Stating over and over that the babies are 8 months apart, that  during labor for Tripp Bristol was “having her first baby, and she was only a girl.”  Yet he knew all about an epidural. He called the nurse to “get the epidural” “where is that epidural?”  Come on, folks. He’d been there, done that.  Tripp was not his first.

*  If Bristol learned in March she was pregnant, and if she was 2 mos on April 25, 2008, she was due with Tripp  sometime around or after Thanksgiving.   Maybe a November due date worried the McCain campaign, so they fudged it to say December.  Couldn’t have the VP nominee leaving the campaign trail in the last week to go to her daughter’s birthing bedside, right?   Not that she would, after all, this is Sarah Palin, but it wouldn’t look right if she didn’t, either, now would it?  No,  the November due date wasn’t good for the VP thing, so it got fudged enough to make it work. My guess is that she had a November 18 due date and they said Deccember 18 because that was easy to remember.  Just like Sarah lied about Track’s due date. Such a pattern.

*  Tripp’s birth didn’t get announced by the governor or the families, and he probably came up to four weeks earlier than December 28.  Johnstons had to go along with whatever the Palins told them. They kept quiet. In exchange they were allowed to see the baby in the hospital. Snuck them in and whisked them back out.   Levi says Bristol left the hospital at night.  Hiding much?

*   My November birthing theory explains why they passed up the huge “baby’s first pictures” offer from People magazine, and why Bristol doesn’t look pregnant and runs on ice into church during the second week in December. It explains why Sherry talked as if Levi had been a hands on dad for weeks when by chronology of stories told since he would barely have had days with his  “the newest Johnston” as he called him in the book, before Bristol kicked him out after he lost his job January 5, 2009.  

*  And it explains why the baby was hidden until the February unveiling to Greta. He looked pretty big for six weeks, but by then, it’s much harder to judge.

*   I know there was an in-home interview on December 11, 2008 and Bristol looked pregnant and claimed she was “one centimeter dialated.”  That is no more "proof" of Bristol's pregnancy and delivery dates than the Gusty photos prove.  Maybe that smelly old fake belly of Sarah's got a dose of Fabreeze and came out for one last walk around.

 If I’m right about any of this – all of this – then Johnston’s have kept many secrets too. I’m not disappointed in them, I have great sympathy for them.  Levi was interviewed right after his book came out, and he said he didn’t tell everything, and that he held some stuff back in case it gets crazy again. ‘Nuff said, Levi, do what you have to do to see your son. Mercede, Sherry, Keith, God bless you and I hope you are holding that cute little boy again real soon.