Is Sarah Palin a Truther?

Alex Jones is pushing this video which claims she is:



Note that most of the video is old gravel-voice exhorting the troops to spread this far and wide; the actual scene with Mrs Palin doesn't come until about 9:30 into the video.

My take? Palin doesn't cover herself in glory by any means. On the other hand, the way the question is posed makes it awkward: "Do you support the victims, family members and first responders of 9-11 that are calling for a new investigation?" You could argue that she's answering the first part of the question more than the second part, except that when she elaborates on the "never again" issue it does sound more like she's talking about a new investigation. I give her a barely passing grade simply because the type of "new investigation" isn't spelled out. Call it a C-.

Note in particular that despite Jones' efforts to blur the line, this hardly forgives Debra Medina, or makes Palin more of a Truther than Medina. Remember, the question that Medina was asked was:

"Do you believe the government was in any way involved in the bringing down of the World Trade Centers on 9/11?"

And the answer she gave was:

"I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard. There are some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all of the evidence there, so I have not taken a position on that."

There's no comparison between Medina and Palin. Palin gave a poorly considered answer. Medina gave a crackpot one.

The Other "Truthers"

Michelle Malkin points out that the 9-11 Troofers are only the beginning.

Did you know that Sarah Palin-haters are still trying to prove she didn’t give birth to her youngest son, Trig? These tinfoil hat-wearers are as obnoxious and unhinged as the 9/11 Truth cultists who insist that America engineered the jihadi attacks on itself. The presidential campaign may be over, but there’s no expiration date on Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Andrew Sullivan, against all odds, is still on the case of Trig Truth:

I begged the McCain campaign by private email and in a private meeting to give me something - anything - to kill the story off. I promised to run any evidence that would blow this out of the water. That offer still stands. Please make me look like an idiot for asking these questions.

Um, Andrew, you look like an idiot for asking these questions. As Mrs M points out, the press who covered Sarah Palin back then do not have any doubt that she was indeed pregnant with her Down Syndrome child:

“These internet rumors are very bizarre. We worked with Governer Palin many times in 2008. Our reporters worked her on location and in the studio and I worked with her myself. She was definitely pregnant. You could see it in her belly and her face. The whole idea that Sarah Palin wasn’t pregnant with Trig is completely, absolutely absurd.”

Like all Truthers, Andrew thinks the media are in on it:

All I know is: the media refuses to ask and doesn't want to know and failed to demand medical records. All I know is that some journalists - like the Washington Post's Howie Kurtz - even tried to discredit the integrity of bloggers for asking.

And he uses the typical Troofer dodge of "I'm just asking questions!":

I do not know the truth and have never claimed that Palin is lying.

Update: Here's a sonogram of somebody pregnant with a Down Syndrome baby, although I can't swear it's Trig Palin:



There's another form of Trooferism in the air, as Michelle points out, although this one is more common in the fever swamps of the right than the left. It's Obama Troof, which consists of the absurd claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. It's being pushed by Phil Berg among others, which is fortunate because most of the major right wing blogs simply Googled Berg, found out he was a 9-11 nutbar (from a January 2007 post on this blog), and dismissed the claims right off the bat. As has been pointed out, the State of Hawaii has confirmed Obama's birth and there was a birth announcement in a Hawaii paper in 1961. That's good enough for me, and remember, I did not support the Obama campaign; I was a McCainiac.

One thing I do like; everybody's now using "Truther" to indicate nutbar. Great job, Troofers!

Another Troofer Lawyer

Stewart Howe, fruitcake extraordinaire from the LA WAC-jobs does the usual "I'm going to call a cop" and "can I have your ID?" routine when his message of Troof does not sell at a Sarah Palin event. It's funny; these nutbars are so convinced that the Illuminati are pulling the strings, and yet they think that the cops will be happy to help them out. Which they do here, guiding him successfully to the egress.

I like the guy giving him the bird, and the women chanting "Go home, freak!" Special kudos to the woman who took his sign and threw it in the trash; too bad she didn't have some burly guys with her to do the same to Stewart.

Candidate's Reading Lists

I know our left-of-center readers will probably jump all over me for posting this, but I found this a rather interesting tidbit from an otherwise mundane interview of VP candidate Governor Sarah Palin.

What are you reading now?

SARAH: I am reading, heh-heh, a lot of briefing papers.

What about for fun?

SARAH: Do we consider The Looming Tower something just for fun? That's what I have been reading on the airplane. It's about 9/11. If I am going to read something, for the most part, it's something beneficial.

Well I am sure the troofers are sad that she isn't reading Debunking 9/11 Debunking, but I certainly can't fault her taste in books.