re: purplewolf

All this nonsense about abortion rights really comes down to one thing: the subordination of women. Women continue to struggle for their freedom, all over this crazy planet. Governor Palin is a champion of women the way Joe Lieberman is a champion of democrats.
The Republican Convention is a furious delusion. The moose eating mom is the latest manifestation of packaged unreality.

Kwaayesnama: No doubt the Palin’s, like the religious right(wrong) refuse to use any type of birth control device or pills as many feel it is an abortifact. There are regulations already sitting on George Bush’s desk to be signed to ban all forms of birth control pills and other types of contraception. The first attempt to push this through was stalled due to public feedback, but it still can be sent through by Sept.20, 08. Knowing this administrations past record for sneaky and underhanded orders being made into law without public acknowledgement or even that of our so called elected representatives, it will no doubt be enacted and then it will be too late. It is also referred to as the anti-choice regulation. HHS Secretary Michael Levitt is pushing for this also.
More information can be found through:HHS, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). and NARAL Pro-Choice America.

It has been the goal of the religious right to not only ban all abortions for all women, they planned to follow that up with the banning of all birth control. I first learned of that in the late 1970’s and now it looks as though it is about to happen.

For the republican party claiming they are the only party to offer less intrusion on the “little peoples lives” and smaller government, all they have ever done is the total opposite. The mantra of the family values bunch has grown old and over blown ans very out of touch of what it has now become.

We will respect the privacy of Palin’s daughter as soon as the Republican party and the religious control freaks respect the privacy of the rest of the people’s reproductive abilities.

The self-identified christian-right have, in my view, very strange attitudes toward sex.

Years ago the school district where I taught included sex education classes as part of the fifth grade curiculla.  Stipulations were that children were not required to take the class - a few parents kept their kids out for ‘christian’ reasons? - and classes could only be taught by, preferably young unmarried women. Single men and married of either sex, it was argued were probably sexully ‘too advanced in their sexual thinking.’ ???

At the end of each class period, the kids were to hand into the teacher written questions they might have that they would like discussed/answered in class. One day the young, single female sex education teacher walked into the faculty room and yelled out in utter frustration, “What’s a dildo?”

After we cleaned up our spilled coffee and recovered from choking on our lunches, we told her.  In summary, sex is really a fact of life, children know a helluvalot more about it than we think, in spite of the christian right’s belief that the subject only enters their minds after they’re married.

I respect senator Obama’s view that children are off limits, but there is another issue here and that is judgment. The issue everyone is missing here is this is a perfect time to discuss the most important topic here. This family is poster perfect as an add for birth control. No not aborting as the GOP is trying to spin this situation, but prevention. Any intelligent person knows when you choose to have unprotected sex at 43 you have a very high probability of having a child with Downs Syndrome. Sarah Pahin used poor judgment not using birth control.  Abstinence is fine but a parent should use good judgment and also tell their teens that if they do not choose abstinence they should consider what the ramifications would be if they do not use birth control.
If you prevent conception you do not have to consider abortion.

John Dolan, in a piece posted on Alternet titled “Sarah Palin’s Big, Sleazy Safari” said:
“Perhaps the saddest aspect of Palin’s disgusting record on environmental issues is the fact that its hardly even mentioned.”
This is true. Most of the audience for all of this is more interested in the celebrity style gossip concerning beauty pageants and her teenage daughter’s pregnancy. Ironically the uncomfortable bits of the Governor’s rather shaky biography, may do more damage to her candidacy, than all the actual facts on important issues. A kind of American Idol to the rescue, where the stupidity of the voters actually saves them from a more catastrophic stupidity.
The republicans, of course, will hear none of that, they are too busy feeling threatened by a fifty year old woman named Amy Goodman. The general consensus among the republicans is that all that needs to be done is for America to get to know Governor Palin. Then, they say, America will fall in love with her. She’s the kind of maverick Senator McCain needs on his ticket. Do I hear an amen anybody?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/97207/

http://www.alternet.org/election/08/97198/

Reason:
Your compassion does you honor.

But when moralistic finger-pointers who want to tell the rest of us how to live OUR lives can’t keep their own houses clean, we need to know it BEFORE we elect them.

BTW, it’s been reported the “no government waste” and “no government regulation” Palin, as mayor of her little podunk hick town, managed to garnish $27 million dollars in federal funds.

I LOVE “independent” Alaska, where every citizen gets a subsidy and higher per-person federal funding than just about every other state.

It’s SO easy to be “independent” when it’s being funded by us tax-payers in NE blue states.  Here in NJ, we get back less than $.65 for every tax dollar we send to Washington.  NY, Conn, Mass, PA are all similar.  But not “Rugged Individualist” Alaska!

Sarah Palin’s hypocrisy is more and more revealed every day.

(“I was for the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ before I was against it” should be her motto)

I gotta go here with TOUNG IN CHEEK…...........SHE IS UNFIT TO RULE!!!!![the same as Bill Clinton was unfit AND IMPEACHED DUE TO HIS MORALS!]Obviously-she HAS NOT TAUGHT HER OWN KIDS TO BE MORAL and what is this about seceeding[sp.]??..HER ACTIONS WOULD NOT MAKE HER A GOOD AMERICAN-ESPECIALLY SINCE ALL THAT OIL IS THERE-.....IF THAT WERE TO HAPPEN-..-..-...WE WOULD HAVE TO INVADE!!!!!P.S.I don’t think ANY OF THEM are QUALIFIED to “RUN AMERICA”......

I support Obama and I want him to be the next president because I believe he is an honorable man who can cope with dirty politics and politicians. I am sorry for this girl; the choices she will need to make are difficult to say the least. I don’t believe we should make it touger on her in order to score political points for Obama. McCain obviously made a poor political choice in picking a Vice Presidential nominee because the press and the rabid democrats will use anything and everything they can to demonstrate her weaknesses. This is a family who (I hope) did it’s best to raise it’s children in a way that would protect them from “life changing mistakes” because like most of us they love their children and want what they believe to be best for them. McCain should be the focus of our attention, not a young girl who is facing what is probably one of the most difficult situations she will ever face in her life.

You bring up an interesting point, beerdoc. I can’t wait to see political campaigns in a about 20 years when the bulk of the first of the “myspace” and “youtube” generation begin running for office. Do you think they’ll look back at pictures of themselves smoking pot or having sex as an attribute to their campaigns?
But maybe we will have matured as a society by then.
To look the other way at youthful indescretions.
Then again, we will probably be just a bunch of bible thumping, flag sucking idiots, dragging our cars with horses and cows because there is no more gas.

Cyrena

If it were cold enough for a condom to break, I doubt that there would be anything for the condom to cover. But then again, they were young.
Ah, youth!

This business about privacy is moot. It was the McCain campaign itself that said Governor Palin’s released statement about her daughter’s condition was to rebuke the myths about the Governor faking her own pregnancy. This is what they said. So the reckless disregard for the young girl’s privacy is due to their own initiation.

This nonsense about privacy is rendered even more ridiculous, when you go to the Myspace profile of Levi Johnston. The self proclaimed redneck father who considered an abortion (before Bristol’s mom finds out).
I mean what kind of privacy are we talking about here, when an idiotic bastard such as myself, can just Google-up his name, and his little musings and ramblings just pop out, oops! that sounded like a baby. There is nothing to be private about on this. The participants are blinded by their own headlights.

I just got back from a quick see at huff post and there is a picture of the supposed ‘dad’. He claims he his a redneck and wants a relationship but no kids. Dumbass, here is a chance to hook up to a ‘potential’ political elite family and he wants to play coy. Just the act of being selected will do wonders for S. Palin’s political career and if she is true to her word(which I have no reason to doubt), the whole Palin family should come together and support each other. That means easy high paying jobs and protection against the normal laws the rest of the people have to adhere to in this country and elsewhere.
So stay a dumbass redneck and risk the wrath of S. Palin whom I don’t think you really want to piss off at anytime.

Here’s the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/01/levi-johnston-bristol-pal_n_123089.html

BINGO Purple Wolf..

“Wasn’t adulators one of the reasons that 9-11 was blamed for?”

~~~

YEP!!! Religious extremism. When it’s ‘the other’ involved in this crazy ideology, (particularly Muslims) it’s ‘terrorism’. When it’s Christian Evangelicals, it’s .....????

*I* say, TERRORISM. Isn’t Dick Bush proof?

I think a point is to be made about the fact that the central figure here is a minor who is pregnant, and this for the most part is a family matter. She isn’t running for office, her small-town mayor, small-state governor mom with an 18-month old, special needs kid of her own has decided to go out and hit the campaign trail despite her family problems.
Let her. This kid’s pregnancy hits home the point I made about reproductive irresponsibility (or perhaps in this case, misguided moral views about contraception) in the abortion blog a week ago. For want of the price of readily available prescripitons or condoms, more and more teenage pregnancy (and a big chunk of abortions) could be prevented, but aren’t.
Also, clearly McCain is more desperate than I ever thought to put a woman on his ticket with a background in a secessionist party, a husband with a DUI conviction, and this business going on in her immediate, creationist, fundamentalist family situation. If he makes this kind of decision in a running mate, what is he capable of doing in a potential nuclear confrontation with the Soviets? Nuke first, then worry about the details?

The first lines of this report state, “Normally we try not to pay to much attention to what is happening to the wombs of American teenagers”. Who are you kidding, no pun intended. That is all this baby factory religious cult crowds think of is the females womb, age has no bearing on it. They feel they are the only ones who are allowed to control the uteruses of all the women in America, as well as the world. Got to keep them filled with a bun in the oven as future cannon fodder for all the wars they seem so addicted to. That is one reason why birth control pills/devices are not provided for poor women worldwide. It is a known fact that the abstinence programs do not work and are a waste of taxpayer dollars. Gee, a waste you would think the republicans would jump on and end it.

Sarah Palin wants privacy for her daughter. I say tough, get used to it. You Sarah, don’t want other women to have this same privacy they should have, what makes you think your daughter should be exempt from the same lack of privacy every other woman in America has to deal with? Bristol is no different.

Sarah Palin’s daughter is five months along, and, according to Sarah, the father will marry her. REALLY? It seems to me, and probably others, if he had any intentions of marrying her, he would have done that by now. So much for the family values bunch. Have they never heard the statement from the 70’s ob/gyn office posters: GET TO KNOW THE TWO OF YOU BEFORE THERE ARE THREE OF YOU!?

Perhaps if Sarah had spent quality time with her children instead of running around in the political world, this problem might not have happened. After all, Sarah just had Trig(maybe)four months ago, a “special child” needing extra care as he ages and she should still be home, barefoot at least and home schooling her children, just as she wants the women of this country to do. Her first assignment to her daughters-just say no, the equivalent of the abstinence program they teach in some schools.

Since these religious evangelicals, right wingers etc., have wanted to take us all back to the way God wanted to have us live and act as in the old testament, you know, Gods original plan for treating people who violated his commandments, Bristol would be stoned to death in public. Wonder if they will air in on Fx news? Will Hagee throw the first stone?

Wasn’t adulators one of the reasons that 9-11 was blamed for? Seems like the repukelicans just get better(worse)by the day? Bush daughters underage drinking bar swinging liars, Jeb’s daughter steals doctors prescription pad and writes for controlled substances, Dick Chainsaw’s gay daughter and now we can add Bristol to the list, not counting the gay affairs of the rep. party. And all I hear from them is how much better equipped they are to lead this country. Yeah, strait to hell.

By Ed Harges, September 1 at 5:32 pm

Went there and TPM ‘cautiously’ relays this story out to us. This seems to be slander to me if it is not true and what better way to verify it than to go to the county/state records and search the birth certificates. This just seems to easy to check out for someone with S. Palin’s position to try to cover.
I will go with her established positions on her politics and if teen pregnancy is one and the family is willing to see it through and give their total support, good for them. S. Palin’s other stances and experience are far too dubious for me to support.

As I have posted in other places, I now have the new slogan for the GOP, that is the “Grand Orgy Party,”
“do as I say, not as I do.” 
To me this is so much BS, I have now grown tired of hearing about the Far Right Wing Fundamentalist Christian way of life that I am sickened at the thought of G-d, even endorsing any political party. Much less the Grand Orgy Party. Should someone come to my door and say they are soliciting for the GOP, I will soundly and resoundingly assume that they cannot raise funds from their “rich donors,” whom they have given what amounts to the largest welfare package to in the history of the United States.
All this while the world’s economy is in tatters and our countries economy is shredding by the minute and people like myself, on SSI, cannot get an even break. 
I assure you, I cannot in good conscience, vote for someone as hypocritical and immoral as John McCain, who by the way is not free from the taint of scandal himself. One only Google, Keating Five and you will see many articles about the supposedly maverick John McCain, who touts himself as the future of the Republican party.

Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman, producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar arrested at the RNC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ
Please call for their release:

Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2008/9/1/amy_goodman_and_two_democracy_now_producers_unlawfully_arrested_at_the_rnc

Folks it’s getting worse for poor Palin. Look at this, from talkingpointsmemo.com:

We haven’t touched it. But you probably know there have been internet-based rumors claiming that Sarah Palin’s newborn son Trig is actually the son of her 17 year old daughter, Bristol. In an effort to knock down these rumors, Palin and the McCain camp have now put out a statement claiming that Bristol Palin is currently five months pregnant with child, which she plans to keep and that she will soon marry the father.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/212053.php

•  “Seriously, what I meant was that it must have been too cold to start the car and go by a CONDOM!”

No Big B, I think that it was so cold that the condom cracked and sprung a leak.

No seriously, these people don’t believe in such things.

Meantime, it is pretty amazing to me how this isn’t ‘our business’ or ‘anybody’s business’ after we were ‘treated’ to weeks and weeks of BS about Obama and his church, and his pastor, and on and on. That just amazes the hell out of me.

The Republicans would have you believe that McCain knew about this girl’s pregnancy and thought nothing of it being exposed globally and subjecting her to this level of stress.

I don’t buy it.  The McCains were livid when in 2000 their Bangladesh daughter was politicized and victimized in the campaign, and they took great pains to protect her, to shield her from the news. 

But they think nothing of having Palin’s teenage daughter up on stage covering her belly with her mom’s newborn baby?

Obama is right to stay away from this.  It’s a train wreck.

P.S. After all the dissing I’ve done of CNN, my hats off to Campbell Brown who ripped into McCain’s campaign manager big time!!  She ventured where no reporter has thus far gone, making this guy’s doubletalk quite apparent.  Go Campbell!

This is none of our business either:
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/08/flying-blind.html

Isn’t it the slogan of the Grand Old Party, “to do as I say and not as I do?”

This is high profile, just as brittney’s sister. What these people do is OK. I just find mom’s statement of ‘she will keep the kid and marry ITS father’ a bit presumptive. (and talk about a negative, a fetus is an IT until when?) Mom is an attractive woman but just as you or anyone sees their future wife(or husband), isn’t is better to get to know them, you know, hang out together, talk, check out how each other handles adverse situations and how well each other accepts criticism? Like it or not, add this to mom’s list of knowns for vp.

What is amusing is politicians like McCain are unable to abstain from committing adultery; yet, they vote against sex education programs like this one, which might have benefited a great number of confused teens:

“The Lautenberg/Menendez Teen Pregnancy Prevention Amendment will help reduce teen pregnancy by creating a grant program to teach comprehensive sex-education (education that promotes abstinence, but also includes information about contraception); increasing funding for existing after-school programs that provide academic enrichment for at-risk teens; and establish a demonstration project that funds creative new programs to supplement teen pregnancy prevention education programs in school or after school.”

Each year in the United States approximately 860,000 young women become pregnant before they reach the age of 20. Eighty percent of these pregnancies are unintended, and 81 percent of these young women are unmarried. The federal government currently does not fund comprehensive sex-education programs, despite the fact that 75 percent of parents say that in addition to abstinence, sex-education should cover contraception and other forms of birth control.”

http://lautenberg.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=259466

Surprise?  Truthdig is a little slow on the uptake, no?

The father’s name is Chris Ray, and, until recently, his MySpace page proclaimed his everlasting love for Miss Palin.  Now, of course, his page is only visible to invitees, but when i stopped by it informed me that Chris was “chillin’ like a villain”.

It really is no business of ours in many ways.  On the other hand, her mother knew this before accepting the VP nomination.  Her mother was nominated because of her values.  Those values are certainly at play in all of this.

The young lady should be left alone to make what she will of her life, so long as keeping the baby is her choice.  Her mother gave up the right to be left alone by entering the public square upon her holy values.

Don’t think for a minute that if Barry’s daughters were caught cheating on a test in school, that the right wing media wouldn’t be on it like a hobo on a ham sandwich!
There is no high road in politics anymore.

I thought this only happened to poor girls from bad families?
I guess we found out what everybody does on those long, cold Alaska winter nights. (Wow, even I think that was a low blow!)
Seriously, what I meant was that it must have been too cold to start the car and go by a CONDOM!
Maybe they should have just prayed for those evil feelings of lust to leave their bodies.
(Really, this shit just writes itself!)
Does Sarah’s poor daughter have to wear a scarlet letter now?

She looks a little bit scared, and who wouldn’t be.

She’s too young to be starting a family.

Can’t wait to meet the Dad.

thomyris, September 1 at 1:48 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

It is the hypocrisy of the Christian Right’s preaching of abstinence and its refusal to talk openly about sex that perpetually lands American girls in situations like Bristol’s.  Now Bristol has to marry a boy and raise a child before she knows anything about life. Palin’s daughter was at fault in at least one traffic accident while she was supposedly home with mononucleosis—it sounds like no one was paying much attention to her.  What kind of mother is this conservative Christian Sarah Palin?  Look at how well Chelsea Clinton was raised for a contrast.

Or Amy Carter.

There used to be a saying that there was no hell-raiser like a preacher’s son….How did that go?

So Bristol Palin’s gonna be married in a White Shotgun Wedding????

Erik, this is not about a politicians personal conduct as in “Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and especially that poor Larry Craig. ”  This is about a family member, a private individual, who holds no public office and is not running for office. It is not a difficult distinction to make.

What really matters here is that Sarah Palin is completely opposed to contraception and goes into schools preaching the message of ‘abstinence’. It wouldn’t be the first time, as we all know, that a 17 year old girl didn’t listen to her mother but it goes deeper than that. This is a living demonstration of how inhuman and reckless the message these fundamentalist Christians preach is. In the same way that their fiscal policies involve giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and fighting endless wars.You can see the result of these policies as the global credit crunch unfolds and in fact Reagan also wrecked the US economy with tax cuts for the rich and arms spending and it wasn’t fixed until Bill Clinton fixed it. These are hopelessly crazy policies that are not about what’s best for the average citizen but what’s best for a super rich elite. Keep women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen (how realistic in the 21st century) and keep workers uneducated and so poor they have to work three jobs to survive. That’ll keep them out of politics, (no time) and many of them will cling to religion the way the poor and powerless often do. Politics, as we know, is a job for the rich, not the workers who are to be kept ignorant and afraid so that they can be conned into absolutely anything. Palin is another catastrophe for a party that’s already as popular as a week old fish’s head. One Republican said that if their party was dog food it would be taken off the shelves. This is the reality, not the ‘neck and neck’ garbage that is put out as ‘gospel’.

RE: By Frank, September 1 at 1:26 pm

Now, now, now Frank! Calm down or you will be subjected to some of that medical care you like to comment about.

It is only right that Bristol be allowed privacy.  Unfortunately for her, her mother’s recent decision to take to the public stage has deprived her of that right.

We can only hope that Bristol did not grow up having sex outside of marriage drummed into her head as amounting to a mortal sin.  If so, not only has Bristol’s privacy been violated, her ‘shame’ is now on public view. 

It’s difficult to believe that Palin ‘cares’ about people she doesn’t even know when she seems to care so little about her daughter.