The Mysterious Case of The Bolster Bosom

I wrote this, but never posted it, on August 18, 2009 while considering the significance of Bristol being stuffed at the RNC:


When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. - Sherlock Holmes

Prologue

I have had some experience figuring out the scams of people high on the psychopathy checklist, a task requiring working out their logic and thought processes which are different from what normal people do. Once you get the hang of it, psychopaths are highly predictable. Sarah Palin has yet to surprise me. (My hunch is we should soon be prepared for the unveiling of a cosmetically enhanced Sarah Palin, paid for by PAC money and/or her book advance - money that she couldn't use until she resigned as governor and quickly dropped from sight. Why have policy positions when you can run on facelifts, body sculpting of her rather stocky legs, and breast enhancements?)

But it is different breast enhancement that we are looking at right now: the desperate, incompetent padding of Bristol at the RNC. What was Sarah trying to hide and who was she trying to convince at that moment?

What has been established is that Bristol was padded excessively and that, other then earlier that day while meeting McCain on the tarmac, this is the only time her breast size was enhanced. (Earlier her breasts looked odd, as if they had been stuffed in a Lana Turner cone shaped push up bra, the blouse fabric stretched between two protruding points, but were still significantly smaller - without the pillowing - of the rounded bolster that went public that night.)

The argument that the excess padding was to prevent possible leakage is a red herring. At no other time, except possibly the the one noted above, was excess padding in place. If heavy leakage was a concern, Bristol would not have been seen wearing the unpadded black dress or the light grey sweatshirt within days of the RNC. Audrey makes convincing arguments that Bristol was probably not breast feeding at this time at all, but for our purposes here it doesn't matter whether she was breast feeding or not because that is not what they were hiding.

So what could be the possible story line?

Bristol, suddenly, in full bloom.

Just before Bristol's appearance at the RNC, her pregnancy was announced and, at the time, Levi, the hidden boyfriend, was not identified by name as the father. The situation, like a dead fish forced to go with the flow, suddenly changed when he was quickly flown in to be the fiancé - legitimizing the pregnancy as much as possible. This was a narrative, similar to the wild ride story, that was being ad-libbed on the spot rather than being thought out.

All of this seems to be a reaction to the immediate explosion of stories on the internet and the press about the Trig birth rumours after the announcement of Palin as McCain's running mate. As part of the containment, the internet was quickly and blatently scrubbed of photos and written material for the period in question according to accounts and dead links report by many different, unrelated people. Based on the variety and the extent of the sites scrubbed, this feat could only be accomplished with Sarah Palin's explicit involvement to direct, call in favours, etc. from individuals to remove the material. Her newly appointed press point person, Bill McAllister, would be a great help here. He was who Sarah confided to about the Bristol pregnancy rumours when he was still working at the local television station, a station that never covered the story. Bill, soon after, got a new job with the government, that I assume was more lucrative, working directly for Sarah. Apparently he passed the test of who Sarah felt she could work with. This new crisis would give him a chance to show his loyality once again to Sarah. When the Gusty photos, where Sarah is finally padded enough to actually look pregnant, were quietly released that week, the people involved were his former co-workers and he appeared in one of the pictures. It seems that a lot of favours were called in that week.

There were two problem photos that made it through the scrubbing process. The family group picture in Juneau and the Christmas photo on the stairs, taken the same day, which slipped through to the Alaska Business Journal, Audrey discusses these in an excellent May 9th posting titled Ho! Ho! Ho! The photo shot took place on September 13 or 14, 2007. In these pictures, Bristol's body has taken on an remarkable fullness compared to a picture taken three months earlier in June. A fullness that is extremely similar to how Bristol looks in the black dress in the photo shot with the McCains - less then two weeks shy of a year later. If anything, the breasts in 2007 appear fuller, which would be consistent with a first pregnancy when the breast tissue and skin are taunter than subsequent pregnancies. A situation that many woman reading this forum could verify.

It appears that after scrubbing all the pictures of Bristol from public viewing in the couple of days leading up to the RNC, and thus seeing many pictures that we never did, Sarah and her accomplices would have been painfully aware that Bristol had the same body in 2008, when they were trying to show she was pregnant, to the body a year earlier, which, in a stretch with nothing to compare it to,could be passed off as a normal teenage growth spurt. Thus the desperate need to pad, especially Bristol's chest, to make her look different and more pregnant. We can assume from the RNC pictures that Bristol did not inherit her 44 year old mother's tight abs and at the young age of seventeen she had already "let herself go." Perhaps this is why she was hiding her changing body under a draped blanket during the VP announcement a few days earlier, before her pregnancy was made public. Or maybe this dead fish was being carried away through rapids.

So who could possibly have done the padding and who was Sarah trying to fool?

Check the facts, ma'am.

What do we know and/or can safely assume about the events leading up to Palin being picked as VP:

* We know that John McCain had spent most of his life positioning himself to run for president and wanted that office with a fierce intensity.

* Having won the process to be the Republican candidate, the most skilled and professional people within the party were helping him achieve this.

* That Obama was, no pun intended, the dark horse candidate for the Democrats in, what became over time, a tight race with Hillary Clinton.

* Obama winning the nomination suddenly changed the game plan for everyone and made it desirable for the Republicans to have a woman VP candidate and that they had to make a decision quickly.

* That, to Lily B and Andrew Sullivan's dismay; the Republican party's detriment; and the country's disservice, there is a dirth of qualified candidates that can get past the extreme right wing base of the party.

* It was a perfect storm for Sarah Palin.

In answer to the question, "What do we know about Sarah Palin?" We can now say:

* That ever since her first public appearance she wanted to stop being a fishwife and hobnob with the likes of Ivana Trump.

* That she has thrown so many people under the bus that it gives a whole new meaning to Bette Davis' warning in all About Eve that people should "strap yourselves in: it is going to be a bumpy night."

* There is scant evidence that she has shown loyalty or reciprocity to anyone. Todd, until the revelations in the last couple of weeks, appeared to be the only possible exception. Frequently she has turned on people immediately after getting what she wants. Her motto appears to be: leave no bridge unburned. She is not a team player and goes rogue.

* Although she has furiously attacked people in the name of others, ex-brother-in law - separated husband of a friend, we can not assume that it is done out of loyalty as opposed to, for instance, sadistic enjoyment.

* She is petty, vindictive, impulsive, and unethical.

* She lies so freely, frequently, and flamboyantly that we can confidently refer to her as a pathological liar. Early in the campaign the McCain team had learned to double check anything that Sarah told them. I am referring here to team checking with Todd when she told them that they didn't have health insurance at the beginning of their marriage. Todd told them they always had coverage. The point is that within a week of the campaign the McCain team knew she wasn't trustworthy. What made them feel this way so quickly?

* She is secretive and doesn't trust anyone - even her own family.

* She is post-logical and beyond reason. While there is no denying that she is cunning, she is not intelligent - a dangerous combination that causes people to underestimate the damage psychopaths are capable of until it is too late. A strong argument can be made that she is also delusional.

* In her mind, nothing is her fault and she is the victim. Except, of course, when she is an unmitigated success - "the world's greatest." The swings between the two extremes are rapid and almost instantaneous. To try to follow it will give you vertigo.

* She does not understand the concept of merit and she can't see it from her house.

* One of her few notable skills is to opportunistically turn situations to her advantage even if it harms others and it usually seems to do that. Political mentors destroyed; an inability for her to hold down a cushy job turned into a witch hunt against members of her own political party; a troubled son shipped to Iraq providing political capital; Trig's Downs Syndrome turned to political advantage while,it appears, that his developmental needs to reach his potential are being ignored; her children regularly pulled from school so they can act as props and human shields; humiliating her minor daughter in front of the entire world because, assuming that she is not lying, she is too much of a prima donna to produce a birth certificate - fake or real. I could go on with this list, but in the interest of your stomach I will stop for now.

* The two most frequently used manipulative techniques we see Sarah do in public are using sexual flirtation and affinity cons. An affinity con is when you make a connection with people because you pretend to be just like them, sharing the same values, beliefs, and experiences. "I'm a hockey mom just like you!" "Someone called me a red neck and I said thank you!" Although we can guarantee that sexual flirtation was part of her interaction with McCain, in his defence when explaining his choice, he said that Sarah reminded him of his younger self.

* She believes that, by being brazen, she can manoeuvre and lie her way out of any difficult situation.

How does this all tie into the bolster bosom?

Let's now look at what lead up to the RNC. Some of this is conjecture but it is based on how the individuals would act if we take previous behaviour into account.

* Having to make a quick choice for VP and tactically wanting a woman on the ticket, Sarah Palin was called down to meet with McCain. There was no time to do a independent vetting of her.

* McCain's team, however, would have sat down with Sarah and asked her detailed questions including if there were any skeletons in her closet which they would have to manage.

* Without stopping to blink, Sarah, with amazing consistency of character, would do the only thing she knows how to do: she would lie through her teeth. She would not tell them she had a pregnant daughter; she would have dismissed out of hand the Trig rumours; she would have laughed off the ethical complaints. She wanted the nomination and she would, as she always had, lie and betray her way to it. If she had to fudge a few things and cover some things up, she felt confident that she could get away with it. After all, she had got away with it before. She smiled and winked and came across as charming.

* She got the nomination. The family flew down and it was publicly announced.

* Immediately the skeletons started to surface. The team tried to talk to her about the various issues, but she stonewalled them.

* Meanwhile, she went into personal damage control without McCain's team: having the state site, along with others, scrubbed of photos. Getting the Gusty photos posted. The scrubbing was noticed and someone on the McCain team, perhaps the stylist, noticed Bristol's body.

* Being caught on Bristol's pregnancy and still avoiding the McCain's team request for Trig's birth certificate to squash the rumours, Sarah decided to kill two birds with one stone and Bristol's pregnancy was announced. She was good at improvising - no need for a birth certificate now. Bristol's body now needed to be as pregnant as possible, hopefully people won't notice that she looked the same way the year before. When the McCain aid told the press that Bristol was around five months along, they were only repeating what Sarah had told them.

* Levi was called to come down, probably at the team's insistence, to be Bristol's fiancé.

* Sarah had a problem. She did not want to or couldn't produce Trig's birth certificate and the McCain team kept asking her for it. They were beginning to hint to her that she could gracefully step down citing family responsibilities. There was no way she was going to miss this opportunity. She loved the attention and she loved all the new clothes. There was people to do her hair and make up and an entire trailer dedicated to the wardrobe for the McCain and Palin families. She had spent time there looking at all the great clothes - she would get more of course. How could she get the McCain team off her back about the birth certificate. They didn't need it since Bristol was pregnant - did they? So why were they bothering her about it? Maybe Bristol should look more pregnant so no one would ask any more silly questions. Suddenly Sarah had an idea and she strolled over to the wardrobe trailer to help herself to one of Megan McCain's dresses.

* Megan McCain, as anyone with eyes can see, is a well endowed woman. She also has an interest in fashion design. Her tailored dresses look custom made for her body and one of her styles, which shows up repeatedly on the campaign, is the dresses that have the same fabric and cut of the grey dress Bristol is stuffed into at the RNC. That dress is not one that can be bought off the rack or is it a maternity dress (It is too structured and would only work for a week or two at the most during a normal pregnancy, if it would fit at all.)

* That evening, after Bristol had her hair and makeup done, Sarah got everyone out of trailer except the two of them. Bristol removed the dress the stylist choose and put on Megan's, then Sarah stuffed it to fill out the bosom. It took a lot of towels and perhaps the empathy belly as a foundation. Bristol carried Trig, well she always carried Trig, to hide the over stuffed bosom until she was at the RNC when it was too late for the McCain team to do anything about it.

* Sarah had pulled it off and she felt on top of her game as she mounted the podium to speak. She was exuding confidence and smugness and the crowd loved her. When they came to her afterwards about the dress, she threw the success of that speech into their faces. They were committed to her now and couldn't back out. Sarah had won.

* Now committed to a course of action that they didn't feel that they could retreat from without fatally wounding the campaign, as good political operatives, the McCain team would fall on their swords as Sarah threw them under the bus. They went into damage control - helping to cover up for Sarah.

* Within the campaign Sarah circled her few wagons against the McCain team and the team had no choice but to circle theirs around hers to protect her from the public and to try to contain the damage she was inflicting. Bristol was stuck in the very middle, pulled from sight once again - on the bus looking after her "baby brother."

The smoking gun: out of the holster and into the bolster

Why is the bolster bosom a smoking gun? If Sarah had given birth to Trig there was no need to do it. In the rational world that is obvious to see. In the distorted logic of Personality Disorders there was no gain in doing it and a lot of risk if she wasn't able to pull it off. PDs are never that concerned about risk, but they are very aware of gain. And Sarah gained a lot by stuffing Bristol and going rogue on the McCain team. She hijacked the crazy republican base and is now in control of them; she is reportedly getting 11 million dollars [now reduced to seven] for her book - when she isn't capable of writing a sentence; she is getting her followers to send her money to spend as she pleases; she has fame; and she no longer has to be a fishwife. And, if McCain had won despite the impact she was having on the campaign, he would have been stuck with her as his VP.

She gained because she managed to pull it off, but the problem she was facing at that moment was trying to avoid giving Trig's birth certificate to the McCain team and then the rest of the world, which means that she didn't give birth to Trig. We knew that already, but the effort she took to pad Bristol's bosom confirms it. Why would she casually pad Bristol for no reason when she couldn't be bother to consistently wear belly pads for a month? With all the other important events happening to Sarah in that week - why did this become her pressing priority? The Trig rumours were not even on the radar for Sarah the week before and after the first week of the campaign she went back to her stance that we should just believe anything that she says regardless what reality looks like. In that one week, Sarah was under pressure to prove the Trig rumours untrue and she couldn't. By the end of the week, the McCain team would have realized that there was no birth certificate coming forward because Sarah had lied to them and they probably stopped asking for it. By the time they sent a couple of operatives, posing as secret service men, to Sherry Johnson's house to scrub their computers they knew what they were looking for and why they were deleting it. (Although my guess is that they kept copies of what they found.)

Why do I think that she was conning the McCain team? It is very hard committing a con on a large group of people. Sarah has trouble focusing and does not plan ahead. She only reacts to what is happening to her in the immediate present, as her sudden resignation showed us. Conning McCain and his team was her immediate priority. The public appearances of Bristol were just part of her clout with them to show them they were stuck with her. Before the election was over, she felt that she didn't need the team anymore, she had established herself with the extreme right on her own terms.

There is no way that McCain and company would have worked with Sarah, if they had any inkling of who she was. It was all risk, very little gain, and enormous loses, which we saw as the campaign continued. It took less then a week for her to turn on them and I think that they were stunned by what happened. They became accomplices in her actions against their will. They were tricked.

By the way, it may be worthwhile, before it is scrubbed, to look for pictures of Megan McCain in that dress or ones that are similar. She would never wear that dress after that night but she may have worn it before then.

Why did the MSM not follow up on this? Three reasons: the first is the success of her speech at the RNC overshadowed the story. The boost she provided to the campaign was only two weeks long before she became a liability that the public was reacting to. In the news cycle that made the Trig rumours old news. Second when the media asked Obama about Bristol's pregnancy he stopped them cold by taking a principled stand to leave families alone. This was so breathtakingly civilized that the progressive media backed off the story (this was before more revelations surfaced). The right wing media is in no mood to be civil and Sarah is their pitbull - so they won't cover it.