One person commented: "On the one hand, one would think it couldn't possibly be true because no one, not even Sarah Palin, would be so reckless to accept the VP nomination if it were true.
On the other hand, none of the details about the birth add up. In addition to the other details that don't add up, I find it especially perplexing that the birth wasn't listed on the hospital website with the other births that day (especially after Sarah Palin made such a big deal about having the baby at that hospital and no other hospital) and that suddenly the doctor is no longer affiliated with that hospital."
If everything I am postulating is true, I think that the Palins had managed to convince themselves that the story was dead. The people in Alaska who had had their doubts had said, "Who knows, but I am not going to worry about it anymore," and it was - in Alaska - last week's news.
In comes the McCain campaign and is about to make this small-state governor who barely managed to graduate from college the most amazing offer of her life. We KNOW that his vetting process was minimal. They never reviewed the newspapers in Wasilla from the time she was mayor because they are all on microfiche and to do it someone would have had to have gone to the office and sit there, and no one did. This has been confirmed by the paper in Wasilla.
My guess is that they did NOT uncover this rumor, or if they did they did not understand how deep it had gone or that a lot of people had actually believed it. (Curiously, McCain had also been accused of a "baby-related" rumor (that was completely FALSE! let's be clear here) that his dark-skinned adopted daughter was really a "love child with a black woman." So they may have tended to be very sympathetic to a "ridiculous" baby rumor, if they had heard about it.)
So what's she supposed to say at this point? "Well, sir, I'd love to be your VP candidate except I can't because, oh, gee, I faked my pregnancy last winter." So everyone hoped for the best, and hey, so far, except for a few holdouts, like ME, for example, they seem to be getting away with it.
As far as the baby's birth being announced. Two facts. First, not all babies are announced. I have spoken to the hospital and they do about 60 births a month . About 45 seem to make it up on-line (on average.) So not being on the website in and of itself doesn't mean all that much. But here's the rub. By manipulating the Google cache, we can prove that he was on the website at one point and the announcement was taken down! Now why would someone do that?
I have read several places that Cathy Baldwin Johnson's name was "dropped" from the staff list at Mat-Su. All I can confirm is that it's not there now. I can't track down when it was there, or when it disappeared. This whole odd story with the doctor is really one of the strangest aspects of a saga that is already utterly bizarre. Several people have said that she's "MIA." I don't know if that is true, but I'll tell you, she's like B'rer Rabbit: She's sure layin' low.
