Perplexing persistence of pusillanimous prooferism

Yesterday I lamented my plight over what feels like an obligation to blog about the real issues (whatever they are) in the election ahead.

Well, today I thought I would steel myself, buckle down, and attempt to come to terms with the truth involving one of the most serious issues in the election. An issue said by many to rise to the level of being a “real” issue!

I refer to the “truth” about the circumstances of the birth of Trig Palin.

I have long thought that Trig Palin birtherism was created largely in retaliation for Obama birtherism, and this long and obsessive piece I read earlier (by an author plugging his book titled “The Lies of Sarah Palin“) confirms that the Trig Truthers are indeed trying to inject new heat into Trig Birtherism. I suspect that may be in anticipation of the WorldNetDaily Obama Birther book that’s coming out. One Truther book deserves another, right?

Other than the fact that it was recently Trig Palin’s birthday, the Trig Truthers have nothing new to report, and the author of the new book does little more than cite vintage Andrew Sullivan and give everyone else who isn’t demanding “proof” a sound scolding:

There is one person who can put an end to the Trig matter immediately and instantly, and that is Sarah Palin. Before she takes another step in what has been a hapless bid to position herself for a run for the presidency, the American media should demand that Palin produce full and conclusive evidence of Trig’s birth and parentage. It’s that simple.

No, it really isn’t, no more than it would be “that simple” for Obama to dig up the hospital records that are being demanded by the Obama Birthers.  Because, like the Obama Birthers (whose secondary position is that Obama is constitutionally ineligible even if he was born in Hawaii), the Trig Birthers also have a lawyerlike fallback position.

Even if Trig is Sarah Palin’s baby, she was “reckless” in hurrying from Texas to Alaska for the delivery.

Once that step is taken, then the American media needs to break its “spiral of silence” about Palin’s “wild ride” from Texas to Alaska and to demand direct answers from her about the decisions she made, the actions she took and what motivated her to do so. Anyone who examines Palin’s own story closely will come to no other conclusion that she was “reckless beyond measure”–as Andrew Sullivan so succinctly put it–and entirely unqualified to hold higher office in these challenging and demanding times.

This “wild ride” was said to have “put her infant and herself at risk” and “potentially put all passengers and staff on the two flights at risk as well.”

Huh? Babies being born are dangerous to other people? That’s a new one on me. I think if I saw a woman going into labor on a plane I might offer to help out, but I cannot imagine how my safety would be endangered in any way — any more than it would be if I saw a woman giving birth on a bus. Seriously, what’s the danger? Am I supposed to have a heart attack or something?

It is important to note that the “wild ride” is what lawyers call “arguing in the alternative” because if Trig was not Sarah Palin’s baby, then she wasn’t pregnant on the plane and obviously there could not have been any “wild ride” that recklessly endangered other passengers. So unless they’re smoking so much dope that they believe she was endangering passengers with a phony full-term pregnancy involving a baby that wasn’t there, it’s only a fallback position — of value only if Trig’s birth becomes “authenticated.”

As to constitutional issues, I can find nothing in the constitution about the ineligibility of presidential candidates who hurried (on a “wild ride” or not) from one state to another to have a baby. But I admit, I read the Constitution literally. There might be an implied pregnancy clause in there somewhere. Perhaps readers can enlighten me.

There’s another minor point which has me confused about this whole thing.

So far as I know, Trig Palin is not a candidate for president, right? So, even if Sarah Palin were to do as her critics demand and supply a detailed birth certificate for him along with independent DNA evidence that she is his mom (I guess that’s what they want), not only would that settle nothing, but it would be constitutionally irrelevant. Even if Trig turned out to be a Russian changeling born to Sarah Palin’s neighbors and tossed over the fence from Russia into her Alaska yard from which she is known to have waved to them, that has nothing to do with the constitutional eligibility of anyone in the race.

Silly as I think they are, at least the Obama Birthers are talking about things that would be constitutionally relevant if they were true. They claim that he wasn’t born in Hawaii even though Hawaii says he was, and that in the alternative even if he was, he still wasn’t a natural born citizen because his father was not a citizen. However unfounded these arguments are, they are at least theoretically grounded in a constitutional provision requiring candidates to be born in this country. Unfortunately for the Obama Birthers, the Constitution makes no mention of birth certificates (much less types of birth certificates), and states have the sovereign right to keep vital statistics certifying who was born in them in whatever way they please. As these records constitute prima facie evidence of what they say, proving their falsity is nearly impossible in the legal arena, which leaves only the arena of conspiracy theory politics. If the latter approach works, and the majority of the voting public comes to disbelieve the State of Hawaii, then maybe Obama will decide to produce additional corroborating evidence of his birth, and as I have argued ad nauseam, it is in his interest to bait the birthers and drag this conspiracy theory drama out as long as possible, thereby avoiding substantive issues.

Not that there’s anything wrong with an entertaining conspiracy theory, so once again folks, what about the Obama girls? Has their parentage been verified? Has anyone seen their birth certificates and tested their DNA? Does anyone know whether Michelle Obama had any wild rides?

Considering that the grandaddy of Trig Trutherdom Andrew Sullivan famously called the birth of Trig Palin “one of the biggest frauds in American political history,” (my apologies again for letting him take over the blog) how do we know that the Obamas didn’t get away with perpetrating at least two similar frauds?

The Obamas could easily clear this up.

Anyway, at the rate things are going, all births will be suspect. What’s next? Maybe non-births?

I’m glad I’m not running for office. Otherwise, how could I ever hope to prove that I was born where my lame Pennsylvania “certification of birth” says I was?

For that matter, how could I ever hope to prove that I never had an abortion?

By wearing the t-shirt?