Okay, let's break this down:

 Nope. To prove she is Trig's mother, she makes a public statement that, in effect, only serves to make it "impossible" that her daughter Bristol is Trig's mother, by asserting that Bristol is "five months' pregnant," making it "physically impossible" that Bristol is Trig's mother.

Think this through: Let's assume Palin is telling the truth: She's Trig's mother, and Bristol is five months' along.

If Palin had wanted to end all speculation about her maternity, the logical, simple, and irrefutable thing to have done would have been to release her own medical records, which would have provided virtually indisputable proof of the fact that she--and not Bristol--was the mother of that child.

And in releasing these records, she could easily have spared her daughter the embarrasment of being outed on an international scale as a "fornicator," and a teen mother.  In other words, Bristol's current pregnancy is entirely irrelevant to Palin's authenticity as Trig's mother. So if she's telling the truth and can prove it, why bring Bristol into it at all? Why throw your pregnant, teenaged daughter under the bus and international scrutiny if you don't have to? If there's another, simple, honest way to end the potentially damaging speculation?

The simple anser is, there is no good reason.

Here's the timeline--let's see if it makes sense to anyone else.

According to the Daily Kos, Bristol left school under doctor's orders because she was suffering from mono, at a time that would have coincided with the end of her first trimester, were she in fact Trig's mother.  She stays out of school for eight months, which would make sense assuming a second and third trimester and a month or so to recover her pre-pregnancy figure.

Bristol is photographed in an official family portrait taken in approximately November of 2007 sporting a noticable "baby bump." She then disappears from public view.

In March 2008, Palin pubicly  "acknowledges" her pregnancy. All reports quote staffers and press who have been in contact with Palin over the past several months as expressing "shock" that she didn't "look pregnant at all."

Yesterday, the Daily Kos pulls together several videos and photographs which seem to suggest that Palin wasn't "showing" in any recognizable way, despite this being her purported fifth child.

In April, ostensibly eight months' pregnant, Palin flies to Houston to deliver a key-note speech at a Republican convention. Sometime prior to her speech, she claims her "water broke," meaning her amniotic sac had ruptured, which is--as any woman who has gone through labor at least once knows--an indication that delivery is imminent.

Rather than go to the hospital to undergo what ANY OBSTETRICIAN IN AMERICA would describe as a "high-risk" birth, she stays and gives her key-note address. No one in the audience discerns any distress on her part, despite her assertion that at this point, she was in early labor.

(Note: I've had two kids. I've been in early labor. I could not have held a coherent phone converstion much less delivered a keynote address, in labor. But then again, I'm not Sarah Palin.)

But I digress: She ends her speech and travels immediately--NOT to the nearest state-0f-the-art Houston hospital where her Down syndrome baby could be delivered safely, but...to the airport. Where she boards a commercial flight with a duration of some 9.5 hours, back to Alaska. Complete with a layover in Seattle.

NONE of the attendants on that fligh recall Palin as being in any distress--or even physical discomfort. In fact, none of them remember remarking Palin's supposed pregnancy at all. But maybe they were just a particularly unobservant crew, even thought the governor of the flight's destination state was on board. I'm sure they barely noticed her at all--a 44-year-old governor, 35 weeks' pregnant,  in preterm labor, with a security detail and her husband and assistant and press aide in tow. They'd be easy to miss, don't you think?

Some 2o hours after her water broke in Houston (in first mothers, you start to get worried at 12 hours. In a high-risk pregancy, you worry immediately. In a fith pregnancy that's considered high risk, you don't even travel after month 7), Palin and her entourage arrive in Alaska and deplane. They then get into a car and drive past not one but TWO state-of-the-art medical facilities that could have handled a high-rist delivery of an at-risk infant with flying colors. Instead, Sarah Palin opts to push on for an additional TWO FULL HOURS so that she can "deliver her son Trig" in a podunk hospital in rural Alaska, "attended" by her friend and political appointee Cathy Baldwin-Johnson.

There, she delivers Trig.

Three days later, Pailin returns to work and announces that Trig has Down syndrome. She claims that she and her husband knew of the child's condition prior to his birth and chose not to terminate the pregnancy in keeping with their "prolife beliefs."

And there's where it gets even fishier: If Palin in fact did know that her child had Down syndrom and that the delivery would have been considered "high risk" for any woman because of the medical complications that arise for Down syndrome infants, ON TOP of the fact that this was her supposed "fifth" delivery, why would any responsible mother chose to travel for 22 hours in active labor rather than check into a world-class medical facility in Houston?

Why wouldn't any of the hundreds of people she would have encountered that day remember a woman in recognizable labor?

And finally, why, in an attempt to dispel once and for all the rumors that she was not in fact Trig's mother, would she not release innocuous and accurate medical records attesting to that indisputable fact and instead impugn her own 17-year-old daughter?

IF Sarah Palin is Trig's mother, Bristol's "subsequent" pregnancy is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to that fact. Totally. Brig's maternity is a matter of medical record, which is easily released and utterly indisputable.

One more time, PALIN outs her daughter as an unwed teen mother IN DEFENSE of her own maternity of Trig. If she were Trig's mother, there are absolutely indisputable ways to prove that (the release of her medical records) that don't impugn anyone else.  There's no reason to "prove" that Bristol "couldn't be" Trig's mother.

And if Palin is Trig's mother and can prove it, WHY OUT HER DAUGHTER? Why subject her 17-year-old daughter to public humilation if it wasn't absolutely necessary?

Mark my words, one of three things is going to happen post-convention, and none of them are good for the McCain campaign:1. Palin will drop out of the race without acknowleding maternity of Trig and cite the "pressures of preserving her family's privacy and integrity during a tryint time" as reasons.

2. Palin will admit to the subterfuge and drop out of the race citing protection of her daughter as her motive,  and then promptly agreed to an exclusive sit-down with Barbara Walters to give the "Palin side of the story."

3. Palin will continue to lie, until demands for irrefutable proof of her maternity overwhelm the campaign. She'll either produce, or she'll opt for No. 1, or 2.

Okay, once again because I'm not sure how clearly I've made the point: When faced with the politital obligation to verify one's own maternity of a child, why would anyone incorporate the medically and factually irrelevant fact of their under-aged daughter's unwed pregnancy as proof if they had ANYTHING ELSE to offer?

If Sarah Palin DIDN'T HAVE to make her daughter the object of scrutiny to prove she hadn't lied, why in God's name would she do so?

 And that, as they say, is the the proverbial Fat Lady singing.