"We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us," the Palins' statement said.
"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support," the Palins said.
"Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media, respect our daughter and Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates," the statement concluded . . .
McCain officials said the news of the daughter's pregnancy was being released to rebut what one aide called "mud-slinging and lies" circulating on liberal blog sites.
According to these rumors, Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in May to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down syndrome. The rumor was that Trig was actually Bristol Palin's child and that Sarah Palin was the grandmother.
A senior McCain campaign official said the McCain camp was appalled that these rumors had not only been spread around liberal blog sites and partisan Democrats, but also were the subject of heightened interest from mainstream news media.
"The despicable rumors that have been spread by liberal blogs, some even with Barack Obama's name in them, is a real anchor around the Democratic ticket, pulling them down in the mud in a way that certainly juxtaposes themselves against their 'campaign of change,'" a senior aide said.
As I've said before, the supporters of Barack Obama will stop at nothing to win this race. They've gone way too far this time. This little stunt will boomerang big time against their candidate.
26 comments:
So we instead are left with a vice presidential candidate, who, at eight months pregnant and in early labor, intentionally climbed on board an aircraft for a twelve hour flight while leaking amniotic fluid. Good judgment?
Having had four children, Palin should have known that at eight months, you do not fly. She was apparently determined that she was going to address that conference in Texas and decided to make the trip in the first place. Another example of good judgment?
I do not believe for a minute that a doctor told her she could fly under such conditions. No responsible doctor would encourage an eight month pregnant woman to fly let alone fly while leaking amniotic fluid.
As a nurse I agree wholeheartedly with lawyer's observations. If indeed the events occurred as Palin alleges then she put not only her baby but the airline personnel in an untenable and put herself and her baby in a dangerous position. Stewards and stewardesses are not trauned to deliver babies, not even in first class. First babies are notoriously slow but a multiparous woman can deliver with only a very short labor. I am concerned about the lack of judgment in this life or death decion even if things turned out o.k. this time. Is this what you want for a person whowill be a heartbeat away from being president?
Gary, you will never print this but everyone including you know that this is the second child of the 17 year old daughter. Her first is the one Palin lies about and says is hers. YOU KNOW THAT!!
If the daughter has an abortion, the feminist and liberals will race over to the Republican ticket!!
I guess the Obama people have put the Larry Sinclair drug and sex scandal back into play. We'll see how the Obamonauts handle the lurid details of Obama's secret life.
What's the big deal? Teens have conceived and given birth out of wedlock, and become Congresswomen.
Does anyone know the details of the 8 months pregnant flight? Was it commercial or private? High or low altitude? Depending on cabin pressuration I would think the risk could be reduced with a lower altitude adventure, might make it difficult to get over mountains and such though. (I'm just speculating, not sure what would be possible here)
And, of course, the Democrats will start casting stones in Palin's direction about and and every thing while John Edwards, Larry Sinclair's (unproven, but need to be put to rest one way or the other) accusations, Biden's "neat and clean" comment, former DNC Chair's "hurricane is God on our side" comment and who knows what else get ignored or get a pass.
The politics of personal destruction are alive and well and it's unfortunate when there are so many important issues that really need to be discussed at much deeper levels than we'll ever see in the media.
A child out of wedlock? So much for McCain's attempt to pander to the religious right.
Again Josh, if you want to talk about this sort of thing, we'll be happy to discuss Obama's secret gay life and how his ex-lovers have died mysteriously.
artwilsonfuggins46201.....
are you stoned or just stupid? If the daughter is 5 months pregnant, and the infant is 4 months old, that means she got prenant with the second child before she delivered the first.
I'm not a Dr., but I am pretty sure physiology does not work that way.
Maybe you should go back to elemantary school and learn about the birds and the bees.
Gary, you're absolutely right. The rumors ARE unseemly. However, there are a few logical observations and a few REAL questions that should be asked.
1. Considering that Palin previously covered up her earlier pregnancy and obviously attempted to cover this story up, we have more examples of Republicans acting very secretly and not showing the transparency they allegedly promise to bring back to Washington.
2. As Jake Tapper succinctly put it, if this were Barack and Michelle Obama's pregnant unmarried daughter how would the story be covered. To be more specific, how would THIS blog have covered it?
3. This certainly flies in the face of Palin's insistence on both abstinance only education and hostility towards birth control.
4. One of the contributing factors behind female poverty is having kids in one's teenage years and never going to college. How is Palin going to be able to address this, considering her stances on abortion, sex ed, and birth control play not a small part in this?
5. If not for these rumors, just when was Palin planning on telling anyone about this?
Hey Art,
I'd rather have a VP claim a granddaughter as her own child than have a president who hung out with an unrepentant former terrorist!
I'd rather have a VP whose daughter had a kid out of wedlock than a president who attended a church that spewed anti-American, racist invective every Sunday!
Art, just go back to your bell tower.
You can spin this how you like, but this says a lot about the whole family values issue. I thought it was poor judgment and taste for her to accept a nomination that would remove her from actively raising her four month old special needs child. Knowing that she has other child rearing issues further confirms my gut feeling that her place is with her family, not in Washington and abroad handling issues for our country. I know that their family is only human, but putting them in Washington as a model family is unacceptable. On a different note, if there was ANYTHING credible regarding a hidden lifestyle with Obama, his nomination would have been sunk a long time ago. My suggestion...don't allow lunacy to prevail.
Obama has come out publicly and stated that the families of, and especially the children of political candidates are off limits in politics.
I believe we have the first ever statement from Obama that Obama's own droids will disagree with to the bitter, angry end.
legaldiva
should Palin's husband also quit his job to address the family issues or is it only a woman who should stay home with the kids?
Okay, First Obama told us his parents were married and divorced when he was two. Then Michelle Obama announces awhile back that Barack was born into a single parent family. Which is it? Is he an illegimate child or were his parents married. Could his parents have even been legally married given that his father already had 2wives back in Kenya? Have these issues been out there this year? Yes. Has the media covered them? No. So why then are they so interested in Palin's 17-year-old daughter. We can't talk about the two years Obama lived with a Pakistani cocaine dealer in a sleazy Manhattan apartment as a young adult. It's the same old crap. The mainstream media hates Republicans and will dig any piece of dirt up they can to destroy them, while they completely ignore matters like John Edwards love child payoff scandal. There is a man who has sworn under oath he had sex with Obama and did cocaine with him. He's led a very sorry life, but most of Obama's associates are filthy and sleazy crooks. If Obama used Tony Rezko to get where he is today, why should we believe he wouldn't have sex with Larry Sinclair? Just sayin, if that's the game the Obama supporters want to play.
Gary, bring up Larry Sinclair all you want. In fact, you have unsuccessfully done so for quite sometime now. I have been waiting for this Larry Sinclair story to break into MSM, but it never has. It is so discredited, I don't believe it has even made it into a viral e-mail. The only evidence about the Larry Sinclair is Larry Sinclair himself, who is professed hardcore drug abuser, and who has been convicted of crimes of dishonesty in the past.
No, you won't read about Larry Sinclair in the mainstream media. They are all in the tank with Obama and have been thoughout this campaign. Every scurrilous attack on McCain has been front page news. Obama himself is an admitted hardcore drug user. His autobiography has been proven to be filled with lies. He used the most corrupt criminal elements of the Chicago political machine to get ahead in politics. His buddy Rezko was hanging out with adult married men who were holding all night drug and sex parties in a Chicago hotel frequented by gay men. I believe Larry Sinclair. I despise the life he has led, but I know the gay community well enough to know there are lots of prominent straight men getting it on the down low all the time. What did Joe Biden, III trump up false charges against him to interrupt Sinclair's DC press conference and order Sinclair extradited to Delaware, only to drop the charges for lack of evidence two months later after the damage was done? This is precisely what I learned first hand that the Chicago political machine does to ruin its political enemies. If you spent as much time trying to learn about the real Obama as you did trying to destroy your former employer with scurrilous attacks, you might actually learn something about him.
So, just to be clear, you believe FOX News and the old Rupert Murdoch machine is also in the tank for Obama? Are they not mainstream media?
Obviously, the Obama Campaign is seeing a horrendous reversal of fortune in the Polls and are seeing their edge slip away in rapid fashion.
The Modern Day Polticial Tactic is to always point out faults in others, to present an appearance of superiority -- it is an 'appearance' only ... it is not proof. Bad-mouthing others is an outright demonstration of fear by the person voicing such nonsense. Such fear should never be allowed to be POTUS, expecially now.
The Terrorists would own this Country overnight. It's bad enough all we're seeing these days is Al Capone Mafia practices at every turn.
Two comments. First, did I actually read the words "unseemly smears" on AI? Ha ha hah a ha haha haha. I'm reminded of the line by Doc Holloday in the movie Tombstone: "Apparently, my hypocrisy knows no bounds."
Perhaps I am being unfair though because most debates have people at cross-purposes over differing definitions. For the benefit of your readership, can AI define "smear?"
I've taken "smear" to mean something like either: (a) innuendo without attribution; and/or (b) something unverifiable or patently falsethat is distributing "underground" (e.g., Larry Sinclair sex scandal).
If "smear" means just that the subject matter is lurid, are you ready to say here that John Edwards was the victim of a smear campaign? See, I thought when the content of the allegation was verified by the candidate herself, that we call it "reporting the uncontrovertable truth." For Palin and Edwards, that's what it was, in my opinion. What does AI call it?
Also, T.C., your point is fair that it's not just Governor Palin who needs to alter her life. Her husband should as well. Preliminary reports on their finances show net worth of ten million. Let me ask you if you agree with the following premises:
(1) Governor Palin could work a lot fewer hours by moving from Governor to the private sector while probably making more income (just like probably any Governor in the country); and (2) campaigning for vice president will be more time intensive than being the Governor of Alaska?
If you accept these ideas, then all that's left to explain her decision to stay in office and now engage in this marathon to November is either her ego or the alleged selfishness that conservatives berate about "professional women" who put career first, isn't it? Seriously, how else can you justify her decision-making? She can afford a nanny to hold her daughter while she's on the stump?!?
A smear is making a completely unsubstantiated claim up like the Daily Kos did on behalf of the Obama campaign, publishing it and then blaming Karl Rove for spreading the lie. Note that the Obama campaign first fed that "birth certificate" to the Daily Kos, which several document experts proved was a forgery. Then a Daily Kos blogger fessed up to making a forged copy of Obama's birth certificate and posting it just for the heck of it.
Comment from the Time.com Article, now that I can read it...
"The fact is, regardless of what you will hear over the next few days, Bristol's pregnancy is not a legitimate political issue. Sarah Palin is a longterm member of a group called Feminists for Life, which is not opposed to birth control. So you probably can't tag her for consigning young people to unwanted pregnancies.
As for the idea — sure to be floated—that the avowedly anti-abortion Palin may have pressured her poor daughter to ruin her life by carrying an unwanted baby to term, I wouldn't bet on it. The Palin family seems to share the same pro-life values going back at least as far back as anyone here can remember, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if Bristol wore those values, however imperfectly, as her own."
Reads a bit differently when not taken out of context, don't you think?
BartLies is right ... What 'is' the big deal?
True Conservative,
I find that when children of "privilege" find themselves in these compromising positions it's usually because they feel neglected by their parents. So, yes both the mother and father need to pay their children some attention so that they can maybe avoid this with the other ones. Also, I believe it flies in the face of logic that they are happy about their uneducated, young, unmarried daughter becoming pregnant her junior year of high school. If they are truly excited, that speaks volumes for the type of people that they are.
"I find that when children of "privilege" find themselves in these compromising positions it's usually because they feel neglected by their parents. So, yes both the mother and father need to pay their children some attention so that they can maybe avoid this with the other ones."
legaldiva then continued, "When children of democrats find themselves in these compromising positions, it's because George Bush is a hatemonger and the war in Iraq is illegal."
"It's because the Republicans have beaten us down for over 100 years, and we don't stand a chance without the government supporting us from cradle to grave."
"We don't have the ability to think on our own. We need people like George Soros to show us a 30 second video of hate so we know who to vote for."
etc. etc. etc.
True Conservative,
You clearly have never met or had a conversation with me because if you had, the ignorant comments you placed beyond my own would not exist. My point is that children from educated families with money tend to be more informed about their options and how engaging in certain types of behavior can drastically alter their futures. Thus, they tend to avoid such life altering decisions unless they are seeking attention that they aren't otherwise getting.
Leave it to the misinformed to twist my basic words of in hopes of making them something they aren't.
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