In response to the news that Sarah Palin’s seventeen-year-old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant, Barack Obama took the high road, saying, “This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.” He stated further that he would fire any staff member caught spreading malicious rumors about the Palin family.
Fair enough.
What I think is fair game, however, are Gov. Palin’s stances on abortion and sex education. Her anti-abortion stance was one of the things that got her on the GOP ticket. In 2006 she stated that she would oppose it even if her own daughter had been raped. In the same ’06 survey she responded that she while she approved of abstinence-only sex education, “explicit” sex-ed programs would not receive her support. I think Obama would agree that we all need to be aware of Gov. Palin’s opinions on these issues so that we as voters can make an informed decision. And I think the current situation with the governor’s own family is relevant to our decision-making.
I assume (and perhaps this is a mistake) that the policies she advocates from her office are the same choices with which she educates her own family. If that is the case, I think we can agree that providing children with nothing but abstinence-only sex education has a pretty lousy success rate. And while the decision has been made (by whom we do not know) for Bristol Palin to have the baby, why is it also deemed necessary for the girl to marry the baby’s father? How often does that work?
A little less than a year ago Lynne Spears had a deal to write a book on motherhood. Then her seventeen-year-old daughter Jamie Lynn announced that she was pregnant, and that particular book deal went away.
I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.
Definitely. The issue on the table is her Abstinence Only education stance which guarantees a higher teen pregnancy rate. Vote Palin into office and you GUARANTEE higher teen pregnancy rates – and a larger population of women with lower education levels, lower earnings, not to mention more children with low birth weight.
But even MORE important than that McCain’s selection of her without properly looking into her past. Afer Palin got the nomination a Huffington Post reporter went to Palin’s home town to request old paper clippings about her only to be told he was the fist to request them…So the reporters got information about Palin’s history BEFORE McCain did. McCain didn’t check her past…now a lot of goo is coming out of her past including membership in an Alaskan seccessionist party, as well as abuses of power, strange loyalty tests, and her involvement in fund raising for the indicted Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens…she was the director of a 527 group that took unlimited donations from corporate donors…
…basically, McCain hired her without checking her references and now has a hornet’s nest to deal with. He showed seriously bad judgement, and overlooked one of the MOST BASIC things you do as a leader in charge of hiring.
In 2004 I was convinced that the Republicans’ days as a party were numbered. They were just so arrogant and culturally retarded I just thought there was no way they’d be around in 2050.
Now I don’t know. I really am feeling Patton Oswalt’s Dukes of Hazzard analogy. I was not surprised how much Palin sucked. I laughed, but then I realized who had her back. She has a really good chance at being Commander in Chief, logic be damned.
Do not despair! Chin up.
September will be the deciding month. The race starts NOW. By this time in 2004, Bush started mopping the floor with Kerry.
But Obama has not lost the edge so far on ANY of the indicators: national polls, likely electoral votes, and Intrade bets. McCain has trailed behind consistently, and still does.
If McCain doesn’t show a tremendous burst of momentum in the next 10 days, he’s doomed.
Even when McCain was POUNDING him on his inexperience and putting out those “The One” ads, Obama was off the campaign trail for almost a month between his trip to Europe and going to Hawaii to prepare for the convention and he STILL maintained an edge…
…ALSO…McCain is taking public funding, so he has to DUMP all of his money before he is officially the nominee or he just loses everything he has past 85 mil. So we’ve seen more of his ads.
Obama is NOT taking public funding, so he had to SAVE UP money until he became the nominee. So we haven’t even SEEN what he’s going to do with his money yet.
The past few days have me feeling pretty optimistic that McCain is screwed. If Obama is still in the lead in electoral votes a week after the Republican convention…McCain is doomed.
We’ll see. The last 8 years have really pummeled my optimism.
In particular, I think Sarah Palin is going to do a grand-slam speech at the RNC and I am going to have to read about it for weeks to the point of nausea. She might be insane and unqualified, but she has a ton of public speaking experience and no matter how uncharming you or I find it the conservatives in media will wag it around like a nudie poster.
Liberals shouldn’t feel demoralized. We gotta buck up. Over the past eight years the Republicans got to try out all the dumb-ass stuff they preached about, and everything they touched turned to shit. That’s because WE ARE RIGHT about EVERYTHING.
EV-REE-THING. And the Republican agenda turned out to suck across the board.
We’re RIGHT. They’re WRONG.
Remember that Conservatives HHHHHAAAATE McCain. He’s the most liberal Republican the Republicans could find. If Conservatives had any power at all, McCain wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the nomination, let alone being the nominee.
Here WE are THRILLED about our Candidate. If I had a whole room full of presidential candidates I’d pick Obama in a heartbeat. I WANT him to be president. Conservatives see this as a vote between the “lesser of two evils.”
Now let’s look at Palin. She’s a crazed conservative meant to cater to the irritated Conservative base. The McCain camp is trying to package her as a “reformer” but she’s a wacked out, Dr. Schlessinger lovin’, ditto-head diddlin’ Conservative with a capital C…and during a time when the Independents are the key to victory for this election, and they’re moving to the left.
Obama is going to HAMMER on McCain’s far right views by association to Palin and shove him into a Far Right corner.
Palin can give a knock-out speech, I’m sure she will. And we’ll see McCain get the standard Post Convention bump. But…BELIEVE me when I say Obama has SOMETHING lined up for this Friday to take the wind out of McCain’s acceptance speech sails. The race will be on, and Obama will win.
Also…we need to realize that very few Obama state’s are particularly in play, though McCain likes to say they are. Meanwhile McCain holds VERY VERY narrow 1 point leads in his states: Ohio, Florida, Montana, the Dakotas, and Virginia has been a toss-up forever. He’s going to have to FIGHT to keep those, and with less money than Obama has. Right now he’s talking about how he’s going to hit Michigan and Minnesota hard, but he seriously doesn’t have the cash to challenge those states AND defend Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Montana, etc.
The Media wants to make this look like a race. But McCain is SCREWED unless he does something amazing.