Saturday, April 23, 2011

Justin Elliott's "definitive debunker" of "Trig Trutherism": Flawed witnesses, flawed evidence and politics - The "liberal media elite" has a problem

By Patrick

The big backlash of the "liberal media" - it was foreseeable. When the confidential "Trig Journo-List emails" were published by the Daily Caller in July 2010 (download them HERE), we got an unique insight into the minds of liberal journalists regarding the question of Trig's birth.

The liberal journalists should be our allies in the investigation of Sarah Palin numerous scandals, but according to these emails, many of them are mainly interested in one thing: Politics - not facts.

Let's take a look at some email exchanges which took place at "Journo-List" on August 30, 2008.

Mark Kleiman, Professor for Public Policy at UCLA, wrote back then:

Absolutely don’t touch it. Even the Kossacks are voting to leave it alone. Even if it were true, it would be as much to her credit as anything, and bringing it out would be horribly cruel to the daughter and the infant. And given the statistics about Down Syndrome and age, how likely is it to be true anyway?
Yuck yuck yuck.

Hit her on bringing the cameras when she visited the wounded warriors. That’s fair game, and that will hurt with her base.

Ryan Donmoyer, Government Legislation reporter at "Bloomberg":

Back to the substance at hand, this is one hell of a whacky conspiracy theory and I too agree it’s probably best left alone. I do wonder, however, whether at least one authoritative piece ought to be done to try to put the issue to rest — not as a hit job on Palin so much as to counter something that has already rapidly and viciously spread on the Internet and will only go more viral. As long as
it’s in the rumor stage it rivals the disinformation disseminated about Obama — and neither is useful for the public discourse.

And I do think if this were true, it may creep some people out who thought the days of sending your knockedup teenager away to live with the outofstateaunt ended with Roe v. Wade.


Ezra Klein from the "Washington Post", who originally started the "Journo-List" group, weighed in as well:

Seriously, folks? Best case scenario, what’s your outcome here: Her daughter, hounded by the tabloids, breaks down that it was her child, and her mother heroically took on the burden and welcomed the disabled boy as one of her own? Palin’s relationship with her children — however they may have come to her — strikes me as pretty far out of bounds. By all accounts she’s a wonderful mother, and devoted to her fifth son. Leave this be.

Lindsay Beyerstein, investigative journalist, sensed a trap:

In the postRathergate era, journalists should be on their guard for Republican dirty tricks.

If this story gains traction, regardless of its truth or falsity, the Republicans will take steps to neutralize the meme.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the McCain campaign were to leak doctored evidence for the sole purpose of discrediting it and destroying the journalist who published it. That’s probably what the Killian memos were.

We should also be on guard for “evidence” falling into the lap of an unknown and easily discredited figure. That’s probably what Rove did to neutralize the allegations of cocaine use by George W. Bush, lo these many years ago.

If apparently wellsubstantiated allegations emerge, we should be alert for the story behind the story, so to speak.

Maggie Mahar, guest contributor at "Politico":

Water breaking doesn’t mean you’re about to deliver.

You can go a couple of days after your water breaks before going into labor.–though at some point, they’ll induce the labor because they’re worried about infection.

Of course an airline would let her on the plane. The airline would have no way of knowing–unless she told them.

As a woman who has had 4 children, she wouldn’t be in a panic, and would have some sense of how close she was to going into labor.

As for raising her daughter’s child (if it was her daughter’s child) this is, as someone else said, a timehonored solution to teen pregnancy when the teen isn’t ready to be a mother and the family as a whole doesn’t want to give up the baby. (This doesn’t mean they’re antiabortion; they just can’t bear the idea of losing or giving up “their” grandhild,/child. Everyone feels better keeping hte baby and at the same time the teen can go on with her life.

There is nothing sordid about this unless the teen’s father is the father of the baby . . Otherwise, it’s an understandable solution, –but rather complicated to explain to a 4yearold.

Eventually you explain it, and if done in a guiltfree fashion, presumably it’s no more traumatic than finding out you’re adopted. Except you don’t have to hunt for your mother or wonder what she’s like.

Adam Serwer from "The American Prospect":

I gotta say, if this is much ado about nothing, the McCain campaign may be very happy to air these rumors in public. It gives them their first big opportunity to say that she’s being attacked unfairly, and because Democrats are sexist.

Mark Kleiman then expressed a notion which apparently became the"consensus":

I see no upside for our side here. There’s plenty of other stuff to work on that won’t get her any sympathy at all and won’t risk damage to her innocent children/grandchild.

Andrew Sullivan certainly made no friends amongst the members of this group when he wrote the following after the publication of these emails about the "Partisan Tools" at Journo-List:

This is your liberal media, ladies and gentlemen: totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever. And people wonder how this farce of a candidate now controls one major political party and could well be our next president. One reason is that we do not have a functioning adversarial media uncorrupted by partisan loyalty and tactics.

That was in July 2010, and now, nearly one year later, it's payback time! Watch out, Andrew Sullivan!

After the publication of Prof. Brad Scharlott's research paper about the Trig-pregnancy and the "spiral of silence" in the media, the liberal journalists came under pressure. Did they miss the big story, or did they even suppress it for purely political reasons?

"PROFESSOR: Sarah Palin Probably Staged A Gigantic Hoax About Being Trig's Mother" screamed the headline of the story at the centrist "Business Insider" which received huge attention - and more than 375,000 views so far. Where was the answer of the liberal media? Did they acknowledge that they were mistaken?

I immediately had to think of the reporting about the pregnancy by Huffington Post from September 1, 2008, when writer Lee Stranahan declared that the mystery of the pregnancy had been solved: "Anchorage TV Station: Sarah Palin Was 'Definitely Pregnant' With Trig." No further questions had to be asked. Documented proof was never deemed to be necessary.

I actually exchanged some emails with Lee Stranahan in October 2009, shortly after I had started to blog for Palingates. I had send him a long list of links and material regarding "babygate". He wrote me on October 27, 2009:

Patrick,

There a ton of holes in your theory. One of them involves a giant conspiracy of a lot of people, including people like Levi Johnston and the people I spoke to. It's implausible.

I've seen the 'proof'. Much of it - like her flight from Texas - doesn't mean anything. First off, I don't her behavior weird. My wife gave birth to two kids, unassisted - no doctor or midwife. Not everyone views the birthing process the same way.

More importantly - why rush home? Palin wasn't really pregant, right? No need to rush.

And for that matter, why do such a shitty job of faking it? Appearing without her fat suit in all those pictures.

It doesn't pass any sniff test to me and I talked to people.

I was right about John Edwards. I researched to confirm my hunches.

Through this email exchange in October 2009 I got an insight into how narrow-minded Huffington Post was in the question regarding Trig's birth. I was therefore not surprised at all when regular HuffPost-blogger Geoffrey Dunn, whose highly anticipated investigative book about Sarah Palin will appear on May 10, was recently branded a "conspiracy theorist" by Huffington Post. The reason for this harsh treatment was a perfectly reasonable and factual article by Geoffrey Dunn which Huffington Post rejected, and instead was then published by "Business Insider."

Now, following the deeply flawed article by Julia O'Malley in the "Anchorage Daily News", the liberal media has gone on the attack: Justin Elliott at "Salon", Jason Linkins at "Huffington Post", Jonathan Chait at "The New Republic" and Joe Coscarelli at "Village Voice" have declared that the question of Trig's biological mother is solved once and for all, and that Sarah Palin is the biological mother. If you choose not to believe this fact, then you are basically a media outlaw, a heretic, a conspiracy theorist, an unworthy member of the journalistic profession, according to Jason Linkins at Huffington Post:

It was more or less a practical joke, warmed over with academic pretensions. The fact is that Trig Trutherism, like Birtherism, and also classic 9/11 Trutherism, are different offshoots of the same conspiratorial tradition, where you begin with a zany premise and work backwards, selecting "evidence" that can be shoehorned into your premise, while omitting or ignoring the details that shoot it down. Pretty soon, you're attempting to draw spectral meaning from photographs you didn't take and pondering the significance of the pilot episodes of "X-Files" spin-offs.

How long should anyone tolerate this astral projection? Let it cease forever, with the publication of Justin Elliott and Steve Kornacki's multipart takedown of the entire mythos -- which shows great restraint in that it's not all titled, "Where's Your Messiah Now, Andrew Sullivan?"

It sounds to me like:

Yes, where is your messiah now, Andrew Sullivan? You cannot prove it! Haha, we are laughing at you! We have won, we have won, oh happy day, we have been victorious about the conspiracy theorists! Now, where are YOUR balls, Andrew Sullivan?

"The New Republic" even offers a good example of what I would call liberal snobbery:

The responsibility to put the controversy to rest lies with elites.

Yes, the "elites"! The "elites" have decided, and if you don't choose to believe it, well, then go and play somewhere else, but not with the "elites!"

So let's take a closer look at the evidence which is offered by the liberal media elite.

Justin Elliott claims in "Salon" to have written the "definite debunker." He doesn't need documentary evidence, because he has witnesses. Who are they?

Justin Elliott is very proud of his research:

In light of the recent attention this subject has received and the considerable passion it has stirred, Salon embarked last week on an investigation of the circumstances surrounding Trig's birth. The exhaustive review of available evidence that we conducted, along with new interviews with multiple eyewitnesses who interacted with a pregnant Sarah Palin up-close in early 2008 -- most of whom had never spoken publicly about the matter before -- has produced one clear conclusion: Sarah Palin is, indeed, Trig's mother and there is no reason to suspect any kind of a coverup.

Then follows immediately his first "crown witness" - believe it or not, there was actually somebody who saw Sarah Palin's pregnant belly, according to Justin Elliott:

We've learned, for instance, that an Associated Press reporter in Alaska who was covering Palin during her pregnancy in early 2008 (before she became a national figure) thoroughly investigated rumors that the pregnancy was a hoax. The reporter directly questioned Palin about the matter in a private meeting in her Juneau office before she gave birth. Gov. Palin responded by voluntarily lifting her outer layer of clothing, offering a clear look at her round belly. The reporter quickly concluded that there was no truth to the rumors and never wrote about them.

Who is this "crown witness?" A few paragraphs later, Justin Elliott explains:

Steve Quinn, who is now a freelancer, was the Alaska-based Associated Press journalist who wrote the wire story reporting that Palin was pregnant in early March 2008. He told us that rumors were circulating that Palin was not truly pregnant even back then -- before she gave birth and well before she was tapped to be John McCain's running mate. So, like any good reporter, Quinn looked into it -- twice -- and came away with solid reasons to believe there was no hoax.

According to Quinn, in the days immediately after Palin announced her pregnancy that March, he was in the governor's office and asked her directly about the rumors. Palin smiled and, Quinn says, lifted an outer layer of clothing to show that she was indeed pregnant. "She was able to show a thin layer of clothing against her stomach that revealed an enlarged abdomen area," he says.

Quinn added that he heard from female legislators and friends of the governor that they suspected, based on physical changes, that Palin was pregnant well before she announced the news.

An enlarged abdomen area was revealed! In early March 2008! That is incredible. We should probably all be very ashamed now, we evil "Trig Truthers." How could we be so mean and claim that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy?

But wait a moment. Steve Quinn? Doesn't that ring a bell?

Well, yes, it does.

At the time, Steve Quinn was not just an AP-reporter, working in Alaska. In March 2008, he also was the lover of Ivy Frye, one of Sarah Palin's closest aides.

The relationship between Ivy Frye and Steve Quinn is very well documented. Andrew Halcro, prominent Alaskan Republican politician and blogger, wrote about it already in July 2008, after rather "unusual" emails had emerged through a FOIA request:

It appears that one of the more confidential acts in the state capitol is having a cup of coffee.

It's hard to understand why when the governor's assistant Ivy Frye and Associated Press reporter Steve Quinn get together for a cup of coffee and then communicate via the state email system, why that would rise to the level of a state secret.

What kind of secret brew are they drinking?

We are talking about these emails, which were carefully redacted by the State of Alaska.

Excerpt (click to enlarge):


So, does this automatically mean that all "evidence" by Steve Quinn is "tainted?"

Well, maybe not, purely judging by the information which is already available on the internet.

But if Justin Elliott actually had done real, thorough research, instead of just making some phone calls and writing some emails to people who claim that they had "seen" something, he could have known that there is a ticking timebomb, waiting to explode: The extensive revelations about former AP-reporter Steve Quinn in the unpublished manuscript by Frank Bailey.

In the unpublished book "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin", which promises to become a top-bestseller, Frank Bailey describes in great detail how Steve Quinn served as a willing mouthpiece for Sarah Palin, quoting extensively from email-conversations as well. Bailey explains how the relationship of Steve Quinn to Ivy Frye was deliberately exploited by the Palin-camp, that he served as a useful idiot for Sarah Palin. For example, Frank Bailey observes that Steve Quinn's "consistently favorable perspective" was "one we relied on to counter the negative bias in the otherwise Lame Stream Media", and added that as a "cheerleader", Steve Quinn "exceeded our hopes."

Frank Bailey also quotes for example an email by Ivy Frye from March 2008, in which she says the following about Steve Quinn:
He's been a good supporter of the governor and will write a story very beneficial to our cause, I believe. He'll cover the entire timeline from (Ruedrich‘s) APOC fines, the last attempt to remove him, his ties to big oil and the former administration, his badmouthing of the governor to the RNC…not supporting her campaign, etc. Off the record he told me it would be better to hear from us before he here's (sic) from the party. It will appear we're being pro -active instead of reactionary. His story would come out at an appropriate time as you sent the fliers out today.
He'll be published before rr and his cohorts have time to respond.

Frank Bailey's concludes his documentation of Steve Quinn's useful activities with the following sentence:

His dating Ivy was, as Sarah indicated in a few catty moments, only a convenient means to a favorable end.

So, Justin Elliott, this is your main "crown witness?"

Oh, I forgot, there were more witnesses! Let's see how well they fare on close inspection.

Justin Elliott and "Salon" proudly present another eye-witness account, by former ADN-reporter Wesley Loy, titled: "What I saw."

What Wesley Loy saw was the following, according to "Salon":

Some days after the big announcement, I requested an interview with Palin in her office. Part of the reason for my visit that day was to ask her about talk around town that perhaps she wasn’t the only member of the family expecting a baby, that perhaps her daughter, Bristol, was as well.

To ask the question, I insisted that everyone in the room clear out, leaving just me and the governor in private. I didn’t want members of her staff listening in, and I didn’t want to embarrass the governor.

Palin honored my request. I asked her not to be mad at me for what I was about to ask, and her eyes seemed to twinkle with anticipation. No, she said, just come out with it.

As I recall, she just dismissed it as more baseless gossip about her kids.

Then she told me that some were even suggesting that she was pretending to have a baby as a way to cover for her daughter. She reckoned that notion came from a storyline on "Desperate Housewives."

This was the first I’d ever heard of what has now become, as we know, a national obsession for some Palin watchers.

Anyway, Palin said it was all ridiculous. Then she backed her chair away from her desk to show me her (covered) baby bump, assuring me that, yes, she was pregnant.

For an instant, I thought of asking her to let me see or feel her belly but chickened out (something I now regret, given how this thing has taken off so).

After Trig’s birth, Palin seemed always to have the baby with her, carrying him in a shoulder sling. He seemed really small to me.

Another reporter who claims to have seen "the (covered) baby bump!" Do we have to be ashamed NOW?

Wesley Loy seems to express regret in the Salon-article that he once wrote an often cited article in the ADN about the birth announcement, which was published on March 6, 2008. Quote from the article:

The governor, who recently turned 44, told a handful of reporters as she was leaving work to expect a new member of the first family, then headed to a reception at the Baranof Hotel to feast on king crab.

Palin said she's already about seven months along, with the baby due to arrive in mid-May.

That the pregnancy is so advanced astonished all who heard the news. The governor, a runner who's always been trim, simply doesn't look pregnant.

Even close members of her staff said they only learned this week their boss was expecting.

She "simply doesn't look pregnant" - but Wesley Loy now writes in "Salon":

The news was so stunning because, as I wrote in the next day’s edition of my paper, the Anchorage Daily News, she simply didn’t look pregnant. Certainly not seven months along.

In hindsight, I realized I had missed some clues.

Yes, he missed some clues. Case closed, I guess?

Well, it would have been nice to get a statement from Wesley Loy himself, to finally clear up the matter. But unfortunately, he chose not to respond to numerous requests. As Prof. Brad Scharlott told me today via email:

I have emailed Loy several times over the last three years -- most recently a month or so ago -- and he has not responded.

However, that was not all that Prof. Scharlott told us today.

Prof. Scharlott was also in contact via email with former ADN-columnist Gregg Erickson in September 2008. This is what Gregg Erickson wrote to Prof. Scharlott back then:

From: Gregg Erickson
Subject: Re: Palin pregnancy
Date: September 10, 2008 5:16:07 AM EDT
To: Brad Scharlott
Cc: wloy@adn.com

Dear Brad:

Anchorage Daily News reporter Wesley Loy investigated the idea that Trig is not Sarah Palin's baby. I've worked with (and against Loy) for years. He's an astute, indefatigable and ruthless reporter.

During this summer's special legislative session Loy, I, and my wife occupied three adjoining offices near the Capitol We frequently discussed stories we were reporting for Judy's newsletter, my columns, and the stories he was was
working. We especially enjoyed Wesley's accounts of his pursuit the "Grandma Governor fakes birth" story.

As far as I know nothing was ever published on "Grandma," but he might have posted something on ADN's "Alaska Politics" blog or elsewhere that I didn't see.

I suggest you address your questions to him at

wloy@adn.com

Good luck,

Gregg Erickson

What was that? "We especially enjoyed Wesley's accounts of his pursuit the "Grandma Governor fakes birth" story." But wasn't the matter settled after Wesley Loy saw Sarah Palin's "(covered) baby bump" in March 2008? What was there left to investigate? And why does Wesley Loy not share his entertaining "pursuits" with the general public, and why did he never respond to Prof. Scharlott, if everything is so "clear cut?" We are all dying to hear the details of Wesley Loy's pursuits!

So that's Justin Elliott's second crown witness. It's my view that in a court of law, the jurors would have a pretty stunned look on their faces by now.

In addition, Justin Elliott himself doesn't seem to be very interested to talk to witnesses who might offer different observations. For example, Kim Chatman, who successfully filed the ethics complaint against Sarah Palin regarding Palin's first legal defense fund, the "Alaska Fund Trust", wrote him a first short email on Thursday, April 14, asking to talk to him on the phone, saying:

My perspective and what I've seen might give you some insight as to why this is such a big issue, since you don't think it's important.

Justin Elliott responded quickly to Kim Chatman - his complete reply:

dont have time to talk on phone i'm afraid. feel free to outline in an email

Kim Chatman immediately replied with a detailed email, as requested, explaining for example that she had seen Sarah Palin in person after Palin had announced her pregnancy, and that Palin did not look pregnant at all - excerpt:

First of all I voted for Sarah Palin to be our Governor without doing any research whatsoever, I was impressed with everything she said and she looked nice. After she announced her pregnancy my children and I were in Fairbanks and we saw her, I mentioned to my daughter that she didn't look pregnant at all. Didn't think much about it again until ADN announced that she had her baby, the baby had Downs. Then there was the Texas water broke flew to Anchorage drove past a major hospital to Wasilla delivered a premature Downs baby in a hospital that is not equipped to provide NICU care and then she went to work three days later. Are you kidding me. I have seven children, one died from complications at birth as a mother with a high risk pregnancy you would never take a chance like that. So alarm bells went off.

Justin Elliott didn't respond to Kim Chatman again. It does seem that he has better things to do than to talk to witnesses who contradict his findings.

There is more, of course. Justin Elliott cites of course the atrocious "hit piece" by Julia O'Malley in the Anchorage Daily News in which she plays fast and loose with the facts. In this article, the ADN even published the deliberate lie that Prof. Scharlott used "photoshopped pictures" in his research paper - a claim which we debunked with extensive documentary evidence.

Like it or not, that was how Sarah Palin looked on March 26, 2008, just about three weeks before officially giving birth to a six-pound baby (click to enlarge):





Sarah Palin on March 26, 2008, at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau. See our recent post about the ADN-article by Julia O'Malley for the extensive documentation regarding this picture.


We also spoke to Erika Bolstad, a veteran McClatchy reporter who covers Washington for the Anchorage Daily News. In early 2008, Bolstad began working on a story about the vice-presidential buzz surrounding Palin. When Palin traveled to Washington for a meeting of the National Governors Association, held the weekend of Feb. 23-25, Bolstad caught up with Palin for an in-person interview. This was about a week before the pregnancy was announced, and about seven weeks before Palin gave birth to Trig. Bolstad told us that she distinctly remembers thinking that the governor looked pregnant.

"When I interviewed her and heard the news a few days later that she was pregnant, there was no doubt in my mind that it was true," she said. "I saw her. She looked pregnant."

She looked pregnant! Well, how pregnant exactly?

Let's make the fact-check.



Sarah Palin looked pregnant at the conference? I cannot spot it.

We have more material available for a fact-check.

Very close to the time when the conference in Washington DC happened, in late February 2008, a team from "alaskahdtv" filmed and interviewed Sarah Palin when she walked to her office, in high heels, apparently not afraid of the snow, sipping coffee.

This clip was already the subject of extensive discussions in the past on the blogs which were investigating babygate (for example here and here).

Watch for yourself how the supposedly highly pregnant Sarah, who hadn't announced her pregnancy at this point and would officially give birth to a six-pound baby just about 2 months later, masters the icy conditions and at the same time chats to the reporters:


Sarah Palin - Hiking in Juneau - late February...

Did you spot the "pregnant Sarah" now...?

A reader sent us a still shot from this video - which proves how Sarah Palin performed a remarkable magic trick: She is carrying an invisible baby, to whom she will give birth two months later!

(click on picture to enlarge)

Well, just several days later, on March 3, 2008, the highly pregnant Sarah Palin was interviewed by Newsweek's Karen Breslau. Surely it will now be obvious that Sarah is highly pregnant. After all, she will give birth just six-weeks after this interview, and two days after her interview, she announced her pregnancy.




Well, the fact-check didn't reveal the "pregnant Sarah", I am afraid to say, but just exactly the opposite.

But who needs a fact-check anyway, when the "Trig Truthers" are via official, final decree by Huffington Post and others on one level with 9-11 truthers and Obama birthers?

At the end, Justin Elliott also mentions that Frank Bailey serves as another witness - because he has seen a non-pregnant Bristol Palin on April 18, 2008 at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center:

Finally, there is Frank Bailey, a disgruntled former Palin aide who has a book coming out about his experiences at Palin's side. In it, he reveals that "he visited Sarah Palin at the hospital just hours after Trig was born and spotted Bristol sitting in the waiting room," according to a description of his book by a Daily Beast reporter who obtained an early copy.

Well, unfortunately Justin Elliott doesn't explain why Sarah Palin felt the need to start frantic efforts to "debunk" the fake pregnancy rumors in March and April 2008 - while she still was supposedly highly pregnant, according to Frank Bailey's leaked manuscript!

Sarah Palin couldn't even prove her pregnancy while she was supposedly pregnant. It is shameful how intelligent journalists like Justin Elliott, Jason Linkins and others are being fooled by the scam-artist Sarah Palin.

The "definite debunker" by Justin Elliott, which the other liberal media outlets then just quoted from, didn't debunk anything. A "reasonable reporter", to use this expression from the headline by Jason Linkins in Huffington Post, would ask real questions and demand real evidence - questions like the ones we suggested to them in our previous post.

The liberal media now believes that this isn't necessary to ask real questions and to demand real proof. The "Trig question" will start to haunt them, and when this is all over, I am sure somebody will write a fascinating book about the reasons for this colossal journalistic failure, which has nothing to do with facts, but everything to do with politics. But either you are a journalist, or you are a politician. One shouldn't try to mix the two.

With great interest I read last year two books by the legendary investigative reporter Jack Anderson, "Peace, War and Politics: An Eyewitness Account", and "Confessions of a Muckraker."

From these two excellent books I learned that these controversies surrounding inconvenient, politically charged revelations are not unusual at all, and that there can be setbacks, as well as ridicule. However, if investigative journalists are persistent and are not thrown "off balance", the truth will prevail.

For example, in chapter ten of "Confessions of a Muckraker", Jack Anderson describes in great detail his fight against Joe McCarthy, which went on for several years. A major effort was made to debunk the official war record of "Tailgunner Joe" - a hopeless effort, as it seemed at first, as Joe McCarthy's record was backed up at first sight by extensive documentation, and the journalists were more than once the objects of great ridicule. How dare they tarnish the reputation of a distinguished war hero!

However, Jack Anderson and his crew weren't discouraged, and finally they found the pieces of evidence which proved that "Tailgunner Joe's" heroic war actions were simply made up - Joe McCathy "faked" them, so to speak, in order to boost his credentials.

If journalists are not discouraged by the efforts to discredit anyone who tries to find the truth about Sarah Palin's "pregnancy" with Trig, they will ultimately be successful as well. Who knows, in the end there might even be some Pulizer Prize's in store - however, one thing is for sure: Justin Elliott, Jason Linkins and friends won't get them.

They should all look very closely at Joe McGinniss's recent announcement:

For the moment, all I’ll say is that during my research for The Rogue, I spoke to an extremely knowledgeable source who had never before been willing to discuss the question of Trig’s birth. But my lips are sealed until September.

It surely will be a sweaty summer for the "liberal media elite!"

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