After two years, a billion dollars, and record breaking...well, everything, Barack Obama is the President Elect of the United States. An African American with a Muslim name in his first term of the Senate who believes deeply in an idealistic viewpoint of the country. Everything feels different - it makes you believe in our greatest possibilities. I texted a friend last night and tried to sum it up, and all I could write was "There's hope for us yet."
And if there is hope, let it not only bring our new President success, let it bring our country to the point where they realize that being gay is not a choice. That to be gay is to be just as human and just as American and just as protected by our Constitution. That to take away the right to be married is an act of hatred, not protection. And that everyone deserves the right to legally bond with the person they want to grow old with. California, Florida, and Arizona denied those truths.
So I hope you celebrated last night, because to steal from Kushner, the great work has begun.
And here was the speech that laid it all out before us last night. It was, in a word, phenomenal. More words: uplifting, determined, beautiful, hopeful, transcendent.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Everything Is Different, And Some Things Are The Same
Monday, November 3, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
This Is Real. No, Really. This Happened.
Reuters caught this shot, which apparently was McCain reacting to going the wrong way. Or maybe he thought his best bet at this point was to simple eat his opponent. Maybe he thought Obama is made of hard candy. Who knows what lurks in the mind of this guy?
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The Debate: Has McCain Given Up?
The town hall setting was supposed to be comfortable for McCain, and maybe he took comfortable to an extreme conclusion: that the people attending were extended relatives that he doesn’t remember due to dementia and that Tom Brokow fellow must be Tommy, the kid from the old neighborhood who was always too big for his britches. That’s the only explanation for why McCain chose this moment to be snarky, mean, and borderline disrespectful to Obama – he must not have remembered he was on television, trying to win the Presidency.
The thing is, while neither side was excellent, Obama was good enough for the win (CNN had the insta-poll at 56% to 30%). But nobody is going to be talking about their answers on health care, Russia, or the economy. If the debate comes up, these are the topics:
1. McCain calls Obama “That one”. Whoops. Seriously, John, why not call him “sambo” or “my golf caddy”. Cause when you point to an African American Senator and say “That one”, that’s what we hear. Dumbass. If there’s any moment the McCain staff wants to take back, it’s that one. Also, knowing this happened makes me want to watch The View today, cause there ain’t no way Hasslecrack isn’t going to fry over that one.
2. McCain blows off just about everyone. What in God’s name made McCain think this move was a good idea???
Now, for the record, they did shake hand immediately after the debate, but it wasn’t visible on camera. But what would it have cost McCain to shake the guys hand again? Obama has his arm out, and McCain gestures at his wife? Wha? Also… what’s going on with Cindy? Michelle is working the crowd, and Cindy has her hands firmly behind her back to avoid contact with the untouchables (middle class – shudder!). Surely someone in the campaign, an intern perhaps, has the solemn duty to carry her hand sanitizer for moments when she must shake the hand of a dark person.
3. The blowoff continues: I don’t have video on this (CSPAN had it, but I couldn’t isolate this part). Anywho, the debate is over and the Candidates and the Wives run around saying hello and pressing the flesh (except Cindy, of course). And then, less than ten minutes later, McCain and Cindy disappear. They leave. Are they stupid? They left the man they themselves refer to as a celebrity alone with a room full of cameras and undecided voters? Obama and Michelle spent almost an hour talking, shaking hands, and taking pictures… and anchors all over the country got to point out “What you see now is the Senator and Michelle working the crowd. McCain has left.”
There’s a reason Bill Clinton was beloved by the average person – and sacrificing your bedtime to talk to people would have been a good idea, John.
And 4th, talking down to people: Another video I don’t have yet – Grrrr. Anyway, an African American male asks an economy question. McCain proceeds to say how he probably didn’t even know what Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were.
Ummm… did McCain just assume that a black guy couldn’t know what Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were? NOT GOOD.
So that’s it – a boring debate in terms of policy? Yeah. It was sorta “whatevs”. But that only made the above four gaffes worse. McCain looks out of touch, angry, and couldn’t land a joke if Jesus was his copilot.
So the question is: Has he just given up? Cause Independents are not going to respond well today. And if McCain doesn’t rope in Independents, he might as well take an early nap.
***Edited to correct "that guy" to "that one". Which is worse.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Obama + Babies = Best Website Ever
Seriously, it's almost too much too bear, the sight of Obama holding babies on the campaign trail. Cuteoverload.com and their pictures of newborn koala's can eat a koala bear - Obama for the win.
It also makes me want to have a baby. Which I would, except my husband doesn't love me enough to give me a baby. So I'm just gonna look at this website all the time, dreaming of the day when Obama gets elected, leaves Michelle, and makes babies with me.
Did I just make this creepy? Wait, be distracted by the powers of Obama and a Baby:
See? You're back to ooohing and aahhhing. You're welcome.
Here's the website: Yes We Can Hold Babies
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Bartlet to Obama: What's Next?
Aaron Sorkin wrote a bit in the New York Times today...what if Obama sought the advice of our greatest fictional President?
You can find the article here, which includes a good old Sorkin monologue, a defense of the phrase "elite", and a great reference to the power of the Christmas episode.
From the piece:
OBAMA So what about hope? Chuck it for outrage and put-downs?
BARTLET No. You’re elite, you can do both. Four weeks ago you had the best week of your campaign, followed — granted, inexplicably — by the worst week of your campaign. And you’re still in a statistical dead heat. You’re a 47-year-old black man with a foreign-sounding name who went to Harvard and thinks devotion to your country and lapel pins aren’t the same thing and you’re in a statistical tie with a war hero and a Cinemax heroine.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Karl Rove is Dead, Long Live Karl Rove
So of course, the McCain/Palin ticket continues to live up to its values... of being liars and scumbags. The latest ad claims that Barak Obama supported giving kindergartners "comprehensive sex education". Of course, the reality was that part of a sex education bill. Part of that bill included education to teach kindergartners what a bad touch is. With a provision for parents to opt out, just in case that was too racy.
So basically, Republicans spun an excellent bill designed to prevent child abuse into an excuse to accuse Obama of wanting to teach a five year old the Karma Sutra.
Republicans, why do you love child abuse?
New York Time full article destroying this ad, after the jump.
Ad on Sex Education Distorts Obama Policy (New York Times, September 11th)
Escalating its efforts to portray Senator Barack Obama as a candidate whose values fall outside the mainstream, the campaign of Senator John McCain on Tuesday unveiled a new television advertisement claiming that Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, favors “comprehensive sex education” for kindergarten students.
“Learning about sex before learning to read?” the narrator asks in the 30-second advertisement, which the campaign says will be shown in battleground states and on national cable. The commercial also asserts that a sex-education bill introduced in Illinois, which Mr. Obama did not sponsor and which never became law, is his “one accomplishment” in the field of education.
Both sets of accusations, however, seriously distort the record.
The original controversy dates to 2003, when a bill to modify the teaching of sex education in Illinois was introduced in the Legislature. The proposal was supported by a coalition of education and public health organizations, including the Illinois Parent Teacher Association, the Illinois State Medical Society, the Illinois Public Health Association and the Illinois Education Association.
Mr. Obama voted for the bill in committee, where it passed, but it never came to a full and final vote. The proposal called for “age and developmentally appropriate” sex education and also allowed parents the option of withdrawing their children from such classroom instruction if they felt that it clashed with their beliefs or values.
In referring to the sex-education bill, the McCain campaign is largely recycling old and discredited accusations made against Mr. Obama by Alan Keyes in their 2004 Senate race. At that time, Mr. Obama stated that he understood the main objective of the legislation, as it pertained to kindergarteners, to be to teach them how to defend themselves against sexual predators.
“I have a 6-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean,” Mr. Obama said in 2004. “And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age.”
It is a misstatement of the bill’s purpose, therefore, to maintain, as the McCain campaign advertisement does, that Mr. Obama favored conventional sex education as a policy for 5-year-olds. Under the Illinois proposal, “medically accurate” education about more complicated topics, including intercourse, contraception and homosexuality, would have been reserved for older students in higher grades.
The advertisement, then, also misrepresents what the bill meant by “comprehensive.” The instruction the bill required was comprehensive in that it called for a curriculum that went from kindergarten and through high school, not in the sense that kindergarteners would have been fully exposed to the entire gamut of sex-related issues.
In another part of the advertisement, Mr. McCain maintains that Mr. Obama’s sole achievement in education was the sex-education bill. In reality, Mr. Obama not only helped administer a $49 million education project in Chicago in the 1990s, but also sponsored or co-sponsored measures that increased the number of charter schools in Illinois, and expanded federal grants to summer school programs and to historically black colleges.
As support for its contention that Mr. Obama is “wrong on education,” Mr. McCain’s advertisement cited criticism by Education Week, a trade publication. Mr. Obama “hasn’t made a significant mark on education” in his years in the Senate in Illinois and Washington, the advertisement asserts.
Education Week did indeed make that assessment in an article published last year. But in the same paragraph, the magazine also said that Mr. Obama “did promote early-childhood initiatives that advocates considered “innovative and progressive,” and also noted that “his biggest accomplishment in the field was the creation of a state board to oversee the expansion of early-childhood education in the state.”
The same publication has also criticized Mr. McCain, in language that was perhaps even stronger. Early this year, in an article titled “John McCain Where Art Thou?” it complained that he offered “a laundry list of fairly vague answers” on how to improve schools and did not make education a priority.
“McCain is a campaign-finance, foreign-relations, anti-abortion, tax-cut candidate,” the magazine said. “Education is not his thing. Depending on your perspective, McCain’s relative silence on education may be a good thing. If you think the federal government has grossly overreached into the state business of education, then he may be your guy.”
The Obama campaign expressed outrage over the commercial, with Bill Burton, a spokesman, describing it as “shameful and downright perverse.”
But Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said, “the Obama campaign did not and cannot dispute a shred of the content in the ad.”
Friday, September 5, 2008
Didja Hear? John McCain was tortured!
And after enduring the circle jerk that was the Republican convention, so was I.
A good roundup of the various news outlets response to the speech can be found at the Huffington Post. Consensus is: Boring, off from the message of every other speech, good job on the torture story, boring.
My quick thoughts: You can't have two days of Republicans frothing at the mouth to see who could be more vicious towards Sen. Obama to then turn around and talk about bipartisanship. It doesn't work that way. And also, the policy portion sucked and was exactly like the Bush White House. And your torture does not qualify you for the highest office in the world, any more than Gov. Palin's "executive experience" qualifies her to be Vice President.
Finally, this morning, amid stories on your speech was the announcement that the US Unemployment Rate is up again. It's not torture, it's the economy, stupid.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Gov. Sarah Palin Is Liquid Evil.
Gleek actually called her liquid evil. I called her liquid evil with a side of lies.
Her acceptance speech was long on attack and short on policy. So short on policy, in fact, that I've put it behind the jump so you can read it and try to locate policy. What you can spot are the litany of attacks on Sen. Obama, including but not limited to: his patriotism, "wanting to read terrorists their rights", being all style and no substance, wanting to increase the taxes of everyone in the country by millions of dollars, being a community organizer, and never serving his country. Oh, the last two are true, but apparently that takes him out of the running for being President. Cause all of sudden, being a community organizer is a terrible, horrible thing. And you can't be President if you haven't been military.
And don't forget! The media is evil. And liberals are evil.
This speech was to the far, far right wing of the country. The rest of us were given an insight into how the Republican Party wants to treat us, the world, and our Constitution. Be forewarned.
Text of the speech follows. By all means, comment away. Let's play a game, shall we? Try to find the parts that prove she's qualified to be VP, and try to count the fallacies of fear. I can guarantee the fallacies are by far more plentiful.
Please note: Speech is the text released to the media before the actual address.
Read Sarah Palin's Republican Convention speech, as prepared for delivery.
----
Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored to be considered for the nomination for Vice President of the United States...
I accept the call to help our nominee for president to serve and defend America.
I accept the challenge of a tough fight in this election... against confident opponents ... at a crucial hour for our country.
And I accept the privilege of serving with a man who has come through much harder missions ... and met far graver challenges ... and knows how tough fights are won - the next president of the United States, John S. McCain.
It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves.
With their usual certitude, they told us that all was lost - there was no hope for this candidate who said that he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war.
But the pollsters and pundits overlooked just one thing when they wrote him off.
They overlooked the caliber of the man himself - the determination, resolve, and sheer guts of Senator John McCain. The voters knew better.
And maybe that's because they realize there is a time for politics and a time for leadership ... a time to campaign and a time to put our country first.
Our nominee for president is a true profile in courage, and people like that are hard to come by.
He's a man who wore the uniform of this country for 22 years, and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who have now brought victory within sight.
And as the mother of one of those troops, that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief. I'm just one of many moms who'll say an extra prayer each night for our sons and daughters going into harm's way.
Our son Track is 19.
And one week from tomorrow - September 11th - he'll deploy to Iraq with the Army infantry in the service of his country.
My nephew Kasey also enlisted, and serves on a carrier in the Persian Gulf.
My family is proud of both of them and of all the fine men and women serving the country in uniform. Track is the eldest of our five children.
In our family, it's two boys and three girls in between - my strong and kind-hearted daughters Bristol, Willow, and Piper.
And in April, my husband Todd and I welcomed our littlest one into the world, a perfectly beautiful baby boy named Trig. From the inside, no family ever seems typical.
That's how it is with us.
Our family has the same ups and downs as any other ... the same challenges and the same joys.
Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge.
And children with special needs inspire a special love.
To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters.
I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House. Todd is a story all by himself.
He's a lifelong commercial fisherman ... a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope ... a proud member of the United Steel Workers' Union ... and world champion snow machine racer.
Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package.
We met in high school, and two decades and five children later he's still my guy. My Mom and Dad both worked at the elementary school in our small town.
And among the many things I owe them is one simple lesson: that this is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity.
My parents are here tonight, and I am so proud to be the daughter of Chuck and Sally Heath. Long ago, a young farmer and habber-dasher from Missouri followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency.
A writer observed: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity." I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.
I grew up with those people.
They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.
They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.
I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better.
When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too.
Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.
We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.
As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man. I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment.
And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.
But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.
Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests.
The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.
No one expects us to agree on everything.
But we are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and ... a servant's heart.
I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States. This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau ... when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-ol' boys network.
Sudden and relentless reform never sits well with entrenched interests and power brokers. That's why true reform is so hard to achieve.
But with the support of the citizens of Alaska, we shook things up.
And in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people.
I came to office promising major ethics reform, to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is the law.
While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for.
That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.
I also drive myself to work.
And I thought we could muddle through without the governor's personal chef - although I've got to admit that sometimes my kids sure miss her. I came to office promising to control spending - by request if possible and by veto if necessary.
Senator McCain also promises to use the power of veto in defense of the public interest - and as a chief executive, I can assure you it works.
Our state budget is under control.
We have a surplus.
And I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending: nearly half a billion dollars in vetoes.
I suspended the state fuel tax, and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.
I told the Congress "thanks, but no thanks," for that Bridge to Nowhere.
If our state wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves. When oil and gas prices went up dramatically, and filled up the state treasury, I sent a large share of that revenue back where it belonged - directly to the people of Alaska.
And despite fierce opposition from oil company lobbyists, who kind of liked things the way they were, we broke their monopoly on power and resources.
As governor, I insisted on competition and basic fairness to end their control of our state and return it to the people.
I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history.
And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.
That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.
The stakes for our nation could not be higher.
When a hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico, this country should not be so dependent on imported oil that we are forced to draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
And families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil.
With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.
To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas.
And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both.
Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already.
But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.
Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more new-clear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources.
We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers. I've noticed a pattern with our opponent.
Maybe you have, too.
We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers.
And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.
But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate.
This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it.
Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.
Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.
Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights? Government is too big ... he wants to grow it.
Congress spends too much ... he promises more.
Taxes are too high ... he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific.
The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that's now opened for business - like millions of others who run small businesses.
How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you're trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or Ohio ... or create jobs with clean coal from Pennsylvania or West Virginia ... or keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota.
How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy? Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election.
In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers.
And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.
They're the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms, not just on buttons and banners, or on self-designed presidential seals.
Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speechmaking, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things.
And then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things. They're the ones who are good for more than talk ... the ones we have always been able to count on to serve and defend America. Senator McCain's record of actual achievement and reform helps explain why so many special interests, lobbyists, and comfortable committee chairmen in Congress have fought the prospect of a McCain presidency - from the primary election of 2000 to this very day.
Our nominee doesn't run with the Washington herd.
He's a man who's there to serve his country, and not just his party.
A leader who's not looking for a fight, but is not afraid of one either. Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the current do-nothing Senate, not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee.
He said, quote, "I can't stand John McCain." Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man. Clearly what the Majority Leader was driving at is that he can't stand up to John McCain. That is only one more reason to take the maverick of the Senate and put him in the White House. My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery." This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer.
And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely.
There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain. In our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world in which this man, and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country.
It's a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.
But if Senator McCain is elected president, that is the journey he will have made.
It's the journey of an upright and honorable man - the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this country, only he was among those who came home.
To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless ... the wisdom that comes even to the captives, by the grace of God ... the special confidence of those who have seen evil, and seen how evil is overcome. A fellow prisoner of war, a man named Tom Moe of Lancaster, Ohio, recalls looking through a pin-hole in his cell door as Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway, by the guards, day after day.
As the story is told, "When McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would turn toward Moe's door and flash a grin and thumbs up" - as if to say, "We're going to pull through this." My fellow Americans, that is the kind of man America needs to see us through these next four years.
For a season, a gifted speaker can inspire with his words.
For a lifetime, John McCain has inspired with his deeds.
If character is the measure in this election ... and hope the theme ... and change the goal we share, then I ask you to join our cause. Join our cause and help America elect a great man as the next president of the United States.
Thank you all, and may God bless America.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Bristol Palin is Pregnant, And It's None of our Business
Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant. This has, of course, led many already to begin to point to the hypocrisy of an abstinent only mother and the condition her daughter is in. Regardless of any perceived hypocrisy, my personal opinion is this: a seventeen year old girl is pregnant, and it's none of our fucking business. She is not running for office, and she is not our daughter.
I was thrilled to see Barak Obama respond quickly on this matter with a message I think all good minded people should heed:
(from the New York Times) Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, was asked at a brief press conference in Monroe, Mich., about the suggestion by some Republicans that Democrats — particularly liberal bloggers — were trying to advance rumors about the Palin family.
“Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be,” Mr. Obama snapped, his voice raised. “And if I ever thought there was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they’d be fired, O.K.?”
Mr. Obama said the pregnancy “has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president.” He added that, “my mother had me when she was 18. How a family deals with issues and teen-age children — that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics.”
“So,” he added, “I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories.”
Enough said.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Barney Smith, Unlikely Democratic Hero
If you watched the convention on network tv or CNN, et al, you might have missed one of the short speeches done before Obama spoke. These were voters selected by the Obama camp to represent "ordinary Americans". One of them, a guy named Barney Smith, made the crowd extremely happy. I'm willing to bet it's the first time he's ever heard his name chanted by 80,000 people. Go Barney!
PS - Still fuming over Sarah Palin. Just in case you were wondering.
Gov. Sarah Palin
In an election where McCain has repeatedly gone after Obama for being too inexperienced to run the White House, he has chosen a first term governor of a sparsely populated state (47th out of 50) to be his Vice President.
Gov. Sarah Palin is vehemently anti-choice, pro gun, pro oil drilling, pro Iraq War, and a former beauty queen. She believes creationism should be taught in schools. She stresses that she chose to have her fifth child, despite knowing he would be born with Downs Syndrome - the implication, of course, being that a liberal would have aborted that same child. Her only previous service in government was to serve on the City Council and as the Mayor of a town in Alaska that has a population of 9,000.
And even with all of that, McCain is hoping that something in that pathetically thin right wing resume will make other women rise up and vote for her. As if the election is a college dorm room, and all of us girls end up having our periods at the same time. As if any woman who voted for Hillary Clinton did so on the basis of her reproductive system and not her qualifications. As if women are so blind, so stupid, and so hysterical that the mere sight of a woman running as a VP would send us pouring into the streets to proclaim John McCain a hero to women's rights.
This is the most disgusting, pandering, pathetic, condiscending pick for a Vice President I can think of. And in an age where women still do not get equal work for equal pay, where the right to choice is threatened from all sides, where a woman who's been raped can still perceived to have been asking for it, where slut shaming is practically a national sport, where sexual education cannot be taught in every school, where Hillary Clinton can be called a bitch on national television by a journalist and no one seems to care - this is McCain's idea of progress.
I am happy to see that there is a woman on the ballot, and that the Republican Party has finally gone where the Democrats went over twenty years ago. But there is no way in hell that any self respecting woman who loves the Constitution and her country would ever vote for a ticket that has Sarah Palin. No way, no how, no McCain.
Below is a video that underscores how far we have to go - police at the DNC shoving a protester to the ground and telling her to "Back up, bitch." Code Pink, the group that is protesting in the video, is known for peaceful protest. Yet this officer summed up what a lot of people think about women in this country. And the response to the command "back up, bitch", whether literal or metaphorical, should only be what Obama has already said. Enough.
YES HE DID - Sen. Barak Obama Accepts The Nomination
It's like a dream that I'm certain I'm going to wake up from any minute. Somehow, an African-American man named Barak Obama is the Democratic nominee. On the 45th Anniversary of the "I Have A Dream" speech and the March on Washington, in front of an estimated 85,000 people, Obama threw down on McCain and Bush and the naysayers. It was a 45 minute thing of beauty. Gleek and I were freaks the last four nights, texting and being giddy and losing our minds at the spectacle. I've watched every convention since I was 10 years old (yeah, I'm a nerd, what of it?), and I've never seen anything like this week.
If I was a speech writer for McCain, I'd be drinking vodka for breakfast.
PS - Gov. Sarah Palin has been selected by McCain for his VP. It's my favorite exotic animal! A Pro-Life woman!
