I swear, the whole McCain/Palin/Spears connection has become one big, amusing Möbius strip.
(The Politico: Sarah Palin's 17-year-old Daughter Pregnant/9.1.08)
Monday, September 01, 2008
Family Values
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29 comments:
Abstinence-only education works reeeeeeeeeeeally well, eh?
I thought the same thing when I saw this piece of news. This just gets better! I saw a quote that they don't think this will dent the enthusiasm for the evangelical base for Palin. I think it will. And, the supposed reason for this announcement is to stop the speculation that the youngest child is actually her daughter's. Wouldn't the better way to do that be by explaining the inconsistencies in the story? Damn.
Doesn't her instruction manual require that she haul her sinning lustful daughter out to the village wall and stone her to death?
Katyabell --
I read that too -- that the announcement was made partially to quell the rumors. If that actually is true, and I'm not sure it is, what does that mean? That Palin was going to keep it a secret if it hadn't been politically expedient not to? Doesn't that kind of prove that she might have been willing to cover up the "first pregnancy?"
This is insanity -- seriously.
Okay, I just read the confirmation from the McCain aide that the info was supposed to dispel the rumor.
Uh-huh, it sure does that.
Votar, unless you a republican running for national office but generally you are right!
this is my first time to send a comment to you, although i've been quite a frequent visitor. so in addition to your great posts and perspectives (for which my friends and i have come to enjoy and look forward to your writing), i (we) completely enjoy this particular post's label! nice touch. and like many others, we are just watching this unfold/unravel and wondering if being a pathological palin is simply synonymous with a pathological liar?
What are the odds that Bristol is taking the heat to cover up for the seven year old?
This whole situation actually kind of sucks because it will create a big fat target that the Democrats and their surrogates MUST resist taking shots at, since the Republicans will make it about attacking a teenage girl rather than what it is, which is pointing out the dangers of hypocrisy and sanctimony.
Probably would have been easier to vet Palin if McCain had taken more than a day or two to pick her name out of the air. Not much even the best lackeys can do to vet someone with so little time...
If this had been a Democrat, the evangelicals would decry the lack of family values. Instead, they support her strong pro-life stance and family values, part of which include forcing a seventeen-year-old to get married for a child conceived outside of marriage. Got to love the two-aced ass weasels and their flexible approach to reality.
And yet I still get told by people that the moment she plays the "I may not know much about national security/foreign policy, but I do know that I love my country, am a patriot, and I love my children" card, McCain wins.
Unbelievable.
I don't know yet who to vote for come november, but I'm going to completely agree with Obama on this one, families are off limits. He hit the nail on the head when he said "It's not appropriate and it's not relevant." The ladder really hitting the point. Chez, I've watched your blog since its posting on /., and I've greatly enjoyed a lot of your posts, agreed with alot of them, amused by nearly every one of them, but this really only feeds the fire like drama for a drama queen, slightly lowering yourself in the process imo.
Bullshit March. This goes directly to her and her tribes big push that abstinence-only education and home is the only place to teach your children about pre marital sex! It should be addressed either way and palin knew this before she accepted McCain's inane invitation! Its fair game.
Thanks for so delightfully and tactfully responding to me. Firstly, children are who the hell they are, you try to mold them, teach them, give them a path to follow, but in the end, they choose for themselves what they want to do, for better or worse. You in no way can fault Palin for her daughter getting preggers, unless for some odd ball reason you truly believe in the right-wing overprotective parenthood in which they would go further than watching their children like hawks. I digress, regardless of Palin's stances, whether her daughter chooses to follow them is at no juncture the fault of Palin, and if you're gonna go on a responsibility tangent, we all know teenagers are going to do what they want even if it means breaking the parent's rules, which in this cases I would more than bet pre-marital sex is something the Palins probably emphasized not to engage in, and really, that's the choice and the best a parent can do, guide them, tell them the best course of action and let their children decide.
While I completely agree that this reinforces the fact that abstinence-only education is a complete sham, I'm in the camp that thinks the Dems should steer well clear of this. The truth is that teenagers often (always?) do things that run directly counter to their parents' beliefs and wishes. That usually doesn't have anything to do with faulty parenting, and everything to do with being 16 years old. Palin is ridiculously unqualified to be VP, and I'll criticize her for many, many things, but her underage daughter's sex life isn't one of them.
www.goldstarrobotboy.blogspot.com
Jesus, Rob -- welcome back from the dead.
@March,
This isn't about parental responsibility. Where you're missing the mark is contained in a snippet of what you previously wrote: "regardless of Palin's stances..." The issue is VERY MUCH about Palin's stances, but not how they relate to her and her family, which is and should be a private matter, but how they might ultimately affect all of the rest of us.
This would be nothing more than tabloid titillation, and certainly no one else's business, if this were not a public figure who is asking you to press a button and raise her to the second most powerful job on the planet. A person selected to represent, promote, and if enabled, to enforce a culture and a philosophy completely at odds with the reality of her own family's behavior.
It isn't about faulting her for having to deal with the consequences of what many of the rest of us know is unfortunately fairly common, regardless of how we might individually feel about it. It isn't even a poor reflection on Palin herself that this has happened.
This illustrates that she and her family are normal people like all of the rest of us, flawed and deserving of forgiveness for the things that happen among normal people in the privacy of their relationships with others.
This is something the braintrust of the political party she wants you to continue to allow to have power conveniently forgot when the target of everyone's attention was a guy named Clinton. The political party that has made clear its zealous intentions to systematically eliminate all but one of the options a 17 year old girl in that situation might be allowed to consider, while also bent on denying access to information and resources that might have prevented the situation in the first place.
They demanded a higher standard when it was Clinton, and now ask us all to look the other way and respect this as a private family matter, to ignore this woman's very serious lack of qualifications to serve as The Vice President of the United States, while they strategize over a list of Supreme Court nominees who will help them overturn Roe v Wade.
It's about hypocrisy, it's about cynical political opportunism, and it's about McCain's recklessness, potentially at our expense.
Courtesy of THE STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS.
You seriously still don't know how to vote in November?
Really?
March: 1) to steal another Votar line, I am indeed very tactless. But more to your reply, accusing me to be another right wing nut job who likes to control their teenage children is the worst insult one could imagine :) however, what you accuse me of being is exactly what I was critically penning on Palin - whether its home schooling or forcing their kids to church is mind control exactly what Palin believes in and advocates! You treat this has the kid got a dui or something but this is a life making event for young Bristol that goes directly to Palin's parenting skills or lack thereof. Not to mention the huge hypocrisy of Palin and all the rest of the dimshits on the Right!
The Dems don't have to push this issue. It has a life of its own.
a) The press is going to strain this issue not the democratic party, but the right is going to blame the dems because the press is liberal.
2) The reason it should be discussed is not because it is salacious but because Palin pushes the abstinence only platform, and this illustrates perfectly that that platform is irresponsible BECAUSE teenagers are irresponsible.
Z) The McCain campaign has sent a team to Alaska, including lawyers to vet Palin. Normally vetting would take place long before the announcement of the candidate. That Palin has such baggage and the campaign didn't know it shows the pick was made for the shock value and the value of Palin's vagina. Any one want to bet on whether this telling example of McCain's EXPERIENCE will make a different in the polls?
I believe the basis of your argument is flawed. Take a step back, Politicians serve 2 purposes, 1. is to (hopefully) represent their constituents well, since afterall they are the ones that voted for them, 2. uphold a higher personal standard for morals and behavior. Personally, I don't put much thought into #2 unless it affects #1, because I don't like to judge a person's job on a person's attitude. Now, with my own argument, you could say "Well March, if they're held to a higher standard, then their children should be too." Which I can both understand but I don't believe actually occurs.
The reason we even consider #2 is the whole "pretty face" aspect. We want these politicians to be near flawless in their actions, can't blame that, afterall, you could say after Clinton's BJ in the office thing, we don't want the world to know that 1. a president engages in adultery (sets a bad example) 2. on the job, he's doing naughty things. That sends a bad message. History shows this, Clinton's legacy is forever tainted by "one" bad act that in no way affected his judgement as president (at least that we know), and became the butt of all the jokes in the world.
But there is line drawing as well, you will forever remember clinton for that scandal, but after this whole "HER DAUGHTER'S PREGGERS!" news field day blows over, will you genuinely consider that to be a SIGNIFICANT issue, or that in some way will affect her judgement moreso in a negative way? No. That's the line. If it were to come out that she did an Edwards or something, I could get it, but seriously, we're here arguing over the fact that her daughter (like quite a few teenagers) got knocked up in high school. Sure, Palin's been a beacon for abstinence, did you see the flip side? Perhaps this is a chance for her to experience the other side of the issue, be more gun-ho about contraception, birth control, etc. I guess I shouldn't be too naive tho, someone will then of course crucify Palin for "flip-flopping" on the issue or some political bullshit.
I think that its completely silly that this whole thing is somehow an issue.
I want to add that I am a sarcastic asshole at time, and my sarcasm is definitely on the dry side often, and because text is absolutely terrible at expressing any infliction whatsoever, I leave you to try to decipher my sarcasm, sorry.
And yes, I really haven't decided who to vote for. I'm extremely hung up on 2 issues, Healthcare and Eneregy, more specifically in the Energy aspect, my direction in my future is nuclear, something Obama (and all Democrats) blindly and (imo) stupidity view as "ruining the enviroment" and such nonesense. If I vote Obama, I vote to basically close the door on my future after the only good thing that Bush has done for me in the past 8 years, which is more openness and a drive for more nuclear energy (not proliferation, to be clear). I vote for Obama, I support the closing of Yucca Mountain, and other possible side-effects that could have very negative consequences on my future with nuclear energy.
......Palindromes.......
We're not here arguing over the fact that her daughter, like quite a few teenagers, got knocked up in high school.
We're here marveling at how McCain either:
1. knew about it before revealing her as his choice like the cliffhanger of a soap opera, and chose to keep the issue a secret until all involved were forced to reveal it, or
2. had no idea this was coming, because like the rest of us, he knows almost nothing about this woman and her family, and picked her to be the person he holds up with a straight face as his successor anyway.
Either option illustrates a lack of judgment that should soundly disqualify him in the eyes of a thoughtful voter.
Now I know why Bush won Ohio in 2004
March --
So let me get this straight: You're concerned about making a choice that you know is the right one because you feel like it'll negatively impact your career?
Boy, have you come to the wrong place looking for understanding.
: )
Strike Two against the Palin campaign...I'm still holding out on a "naughty pictures during her tenure as a beauty queen" scandal. The Reps LOVE those.
Chez,
Well, I could see how it could be boiled down to that, but at the same time, its an extremely big issue.
Energy in general is kinda f'd in the a. I want, just as much as anyone else here, to get the hell away from fossil fuels as our primary electricity source (I'm not as willing perhaps for my car because I love the beauty of the car it is in its mechanics, but w/e, small detail), but I believe Obama's plan is short sighted. We have a growing energy need, its not going away, and the "plan" is to just build more wind plants and the like? (I know I'm generalizing here, but try to focus on the point I'm trying to make) Wind is good, but really inefficient and uses a lot of materials to create a machine that, for how much concrete and steel goes into it, doesn't really generate a lot of electricity, at least in comparison to nuclear power. And McCain (and other republican's) plan is essentially just to patch the problem by digging more oil. However, what I like the most about the R's plan is that it includes nuclear energy. My bias aside, nuclear is the way to go in nearly every aspect, at least until we can make nuclear fusion, but that's at least 20 years away. Dems view green power as the "bridge" to the next big power generator, Reps use nuclear as the bridge, and I can tell you Reps have it right. Green power can't sustain us in the time till the next big energy breakthrough, nuclear can.
Even healthcare, another huge issue, isn't all level imo. Reps basically want a slightly modified version of the system we have now that pleases people in the mean time, Dems want to completely revamp the system to universal. Universal healthcare is a utopia, and really isn't the best for everyone. There's a reason people come from countries with universal healthcare to America to get certain procedures done, despite the high costs we jack them with, it's because our healthcare "product" is better, and that is a direct result of years upon years of competitive medicine, a positive side effect of private medicine. What is completely fucked is the healthcare payment system we have (see: healthcare insurance). Emphasis on completely fucked, because that's exactly what it is. I got Lasik recently, and I had to buy 2 eyedrop medications afterwards, I have insurance, my own personal insurance (not through my employer), one had a price tag of $130, the other $210, and my insurance would only cover ~$70 of each one. The $130 was absolutely necessary, so I bit that bullet, but the $210 was not, so I deal with "drier" eyes because of it. I pay $120 a month only to get completely fucked when I need a Px, for what? Just to get a $70 discount. Bitch please. And yet, that's my best option.
What we need in the US as far as healthcare is concerned is universal insurance of sorts, with the private medicine we have. Problem is with anything the government runs as far as putting money in to get things taken care of isn't useful after a couple of decades (See: social security, medicare).
To answer your question Chez, really, the right choice is blurry. Obama's got great purpose behind what he wants to do, but because his whole stance is dependent on changing the system, yet, he has to push his direction through the government, the same one who the Reps are more than willing to block at all costs (who 1/2 are paid to do it thanks to the healthcare companies, the other 1/2 who genuinely believe that private medicine is the best), and possibly a few rogues within his own party. Call me pessimistic, but I love most of Obama's direction, but I just don't see how it can get done in America.
Yeah, yeah her 17 year old sister is pregnant (as long as the father isn't her dad, who cares?), mom is unqualified but the real question here is - Why does the fat little girl have a tiara on? She's no princess, she's pudgy and she looks like a spoiled brat.
Keep it in perspective people.
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