Reproduced below is a letter from Anne Kilkenny (originally posted here), a woman from Wasilla, Alaska who fought against Palin’s efforts to fire the town librarian because the librarian wouldn’t remove certain books from the library. It’s an illuminating take on Palin from someone who saw first hand what Palin did as Mayor of Wasilla – including looking into how she could have books removed from the library that she didn’t like. (It was apparently news to Palins that some Alaskans did not take kindly to efforts to censor their library books).
Here is the letter, reproduced:
I think that one of the great things America and western democracies have contributed to the world is the ability to distinguish between disliking someone and disagreeing. We all need to work toward being able to agree to disagree. I like Sarah Palin. I disagree with her.
I wrote this letter to friends and family on August 31. It has since circulated throughout the Web.
About Sarah Palin:
I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more city council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her because she is a “babe.”
It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.
She is pro-life. She recently gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.
She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.She is savvy. She doesn’t take positions; she just puts things out there and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.
Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her lifestyle ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.
Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.
She’s smart.
Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than two years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.
During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings, which had given rise to a recall campaign.
Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative.” During her six years as mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which even taxed food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.
The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though. Borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? Or a new library? No. $1 million for a park. $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex, which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the city didn’t even have clear title to. That was still in litigation seven years later — to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5 million for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 years without any borrowing.
While mayor, city hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.
These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.
As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.
In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow and bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s surplus, borrow for needs.
She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.
While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.
Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of “old boys.” Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the city and as governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal — loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the state’s top cop (see below).
As mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s police chief because he “intimidated” her, she told the press. As governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it’s pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was that he wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband, a state trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than two dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.
She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The city council person who personally escorted her around town, introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council, became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal city administrator; even people who didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.
Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.
When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil and gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job, which paid $122,400 per year, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this commission (who was also the state chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move, which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).
As mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.
As governor, she gave the legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects — which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance — but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork.”
She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The state party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.
Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’s mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.
As governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together a package of legislation known as AGIA, which forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.
Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a state initiative that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the state’s lawsuit against the Department of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.
McCain is the oldest person to ever run for president; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being president.
There have to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than her.
However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.
Claim vs. Fact
- “Hockey mom:” true for a few years.
- “PTA mom:” true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since.
- “NRA supporter:” absolutely true.
- Social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, but vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships. (Said she did this because it was unconstitutional.)
- Pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, but did nothing as governor to promote it.
- “Pro-life:” mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby, but declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation.
- “Experienced:” Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than city council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.
- Political maverick: not at all.
- Gutsy: absolutely!
- Open and transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.
- Has a developed philosophy of public policy: no.
- “A greenie:” no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.
- Fiscal conservative: not by my definition!
- Pro-infrastructure: no. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.
- Pro-tax relief: lowered taxes for businesses, but increased tax burden on residents
- Pro-small government: no. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla’s history.
- Pro-labor/pro-union: no. Just because her husband works union doesn’t make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.
Why Am I Writing This?
First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you Google my name, you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.Secondly, I’ve always operated in the belief that bad things happen when good people stay silent. Few people know as much about Palin as I do because few have gone to as many city council meetings.
Third, I am just a housewife. I don’t have a job she can bump me out of. I don’t belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future. That’s life.
Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the city librarian against Sarah’s attempt at censorship.
Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.
Caveats
I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending and taxation two years ago (when Palin was running for governor) from information supplied to me by the finance director of the city of Wasilla, and I can’t recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? For population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of city hall — they are swamped. So I can’t verify my numbers.You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my “about 5,000″ up to 9,000. The day Palin’s selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90s.
Filed under: Flip-Flop, GOP Hypocrisy, McCain, Palin, Religious Right, Women's Rights
The Republicans – so-called “strict constructionalists” – are constantly, self-righteously crying out ad nauseum that the Constitution should be interpreted strictly in accordance with how the Founding Fathers allegedly intended it to be. Because apparently since only the Founding Fathers mattered in 1776, only they should matter now.
What they fail to comprehend is that what made the Founding Fathers great, in certain ways, was that they saw the limitations of their time, sex, class and race, and founded the United States upon principles greater than themselves. In the Constitution, they created a living, flexible body of legal principles that envisioned the possibility of the United States growing into a Nation where slavery was abolished, where women of all races had the right to vote, and where all people had equality and liberty under the law.
Despite taking the position that the Constitution should be ”strictly interpreted,” even Republicans have to back down from this extreme position when faced with the absurd end point of their position. When questioned directly about exactly how “strict” the interpretation is supposed to be in their view, the Republicans (including McCain – Palin probably doesn’t even know what “strict constructionalism” is) flip-flop. They have to, because strict constructionalism would mean a return to how things were in 1776, including no rights for people of color or women.
This was pointed out to McCain recently on ”The View” when he appeared on September 12 and explained his belief that the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with what the Founding Fathers wanted back in 1776. Blah blah blah. He stated: “I want people who interpret the Constitution the way our Founding Fathers envisioned for them to do.” In response, Whoopie Goldberg asked him the obvious question: “Should I be worried about being a slave, that we’d be returned to slavery, because certain things happened in the Constitution that you had to change.”
Confronted with such a piercing example of the problems inherent with taking strict constructionalism endpoint, McCain had to back down from the view he had just expressed a minute before and flip-flop on his stated position. Shaking his head, he thanked Whoopie for making the implicit point that strict constructionalism is absurd and unreasonable when taken to extremes, saying “That’s an excellent point and I thank you for it.”
So, if McCain doesn’t want to bring back slavery, and is not in fact a strict“strict constructionalist,” than why does he keep saying that the Constitution should be interpreted strictly? The answer is one word: Abortion. This is just one more example of McCain pandering to the religious right, and their one-issue-obsession with abortion politics. Apparently, the anti-choice brigade is so obsessed with controlling women’s bodies that it’s willing to put the entire country in even more jeopardy than it already is in (given the crashing markets and economic disasters littering Wall Street) by risking putting a completely unqualified and incompetent individual one 70-year old man’s heartbeat away from the Presidency.
In actuality, McCain doesn’t really believe in strict constructionalism – he just believes in interpreting the Constitution the way his anti-choice supporters want him to: against Roe v. Wade. Like choosing Palin as his running mate, McCain’s position on strict constitutionalism is just one more example of how he’ll do anything, compromise any position, flip-flop on any issue, in order to win the election.
A more accurate way of describing McCain’s approach to Constitutional interpretation, rather than ”strict constructionalism” (which he’s clearly not), would be to call it “religious constructionalism. Or perhaps just “anti-choice constructionalism.” Because that’s really what it comes down to for McCain’s conservative base of supporters – doing anything they can to limit women’s rights to control their own bodies and destinies. Oh, and guns. I almost forgot guns.
McCain’s conservative supporters are against the Government regulating guns but for the Government regulating women’s bodies – and because McCain’s religious conservative supporters are for it, so is McCain. If the guns could talk, they’d probably thank the Conservatives for their unfettered support, but they can’t, so instead they’ll just keep on killing deer, school children, and cops.
When you think about it, I mean really think about it, in a way that Palin hasn’t done about most of the national and global issues currently facing the country, it’s quite ludicrous that guns have more rights than women.
And, let’s talk about the deer for just a minute. The poor deer in the picture that Palin keeps holding aloft like an NRA badge of honor. The poor deer with it’s throat ripped out and blood pouring down it’s body, pooling on the ground, with Palin kneeling above it’s life-less eyes, with a beaming smile on her face. We’re supposed to buy that she’s pro-life?
How exactualy does such a blatant glorification of death square with her alleged “pro-life” position? Again, Palin’s not really for life. She’s against choice. There’s a difference and it’s an important one.
In 1776, the people living on what would become United States soil needed guns – we were living under the tyranny of the British Crown and we had just finished a revolution. We had more skirmishes to fight with other countries about borders and of course the Native Americans with whom we were also fighting about land (however wrongly). Back in 1776, women didn’t have rights, among other things, to education, to vote, to work, to marry who they wanted, or to decide when to bear a child or when not to. People of color also didn’t have rights across the board, and many were enslaved.
I don’t know about you, but despite how far we have to go, we’ve come a long way, and I for one am glad we’re not living in 1776 any more. I’m grateful that the Founding Fathers, despite the limitations of their time, thought beyond their moment in history and beyond their male bodies, and memorialized in the Constitution principles, such as liberty and equality, that were greater than themselves. What would the Founding Fathers say to learn that people like McCain and Justices like Scalia and Thomas, more than 200 years later, after all the gains we’ve made in building a more equal and free society, want to turn back to the clock to the days just after we won our freedom from Britain? They’d probably congratulate themselves on their forethought in establishing the checks and balances of our three branches of Government.
They’re always going to be individual crazies that want to impose their short-sighted view on the majority, but we’re a democracy, and we can make this country what we want it to be. We can can make it more free and more equal, or we can make it less so.
It’s our choice. It’s your choice. Vote.
- BC
“What’s the difference between Palin and Bush? Lipstick.”
If it wasn’t so true it would be funny.
Filed under: Palin
Look at This.
The National Public Radio (NPR) announced this morning that the National Organization for Women (“NOW”) was going to endorse Obama for President today. Kim Gandy, President of NOW, explained that NOW rarely supports a Presidential candidate, but is supporting Obama in this election because the stakes are too high for women not to.
NOW supports Obama’s bid for the Presidency becuase Obama and Biden have been stalwart supports of the rights of women throughout their careers. They support, among other things, a woman’s right to bodily integrity, reproductive rights for women, and equal pay for equal work.
As many feminists and women’s rights leaders have pointed out, McCain’s choice of Palin as V.P. is not the first time a man has offered up an unqualified women to parrot his position and support his bid to gain power. Women across the country have been deeply insulted by the implication beneath McCain’s pick that female voters are not educated nor informed enough to know the difference between a qualified candidate (Clinton) and a joke (Palin). In endorsing Obama for presidency, NOW urges female voters not to be deceived by the Republican Party’s pick of Palin into believing that the Republican Party supports the rights of women.
The bottom line (available conveniently on t-shirts from feministing.org) is: “A woman candidate is not the same thing as a woman’s candidate.” NOW knows this, the Democrats know this, and the women of America know this.
Let’s make sure the Republicans learn this lesson on November 4th.
- BC
Below is an excellent op-ed piece by Gloria Steinem On Palin. Most horrifying Palin quotes, as cited by Steinem:
“Palin has been honest about what she doesn’t know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, “I still can’t answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?” When asked about Iraq, she said, “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”
Here’s Steinem’s piece reprinted in full:
PALIN: WRONG WOMAN, WRONG MESSAGE
Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women — and to many men too — who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the “white-male-only” sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.But here is even better news: It won’t work. This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.
Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can’t do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn’t say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden’s 37 years’ experience.
Palin has been honest about what she doesn’t know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, “I still can’t answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?” When asked about Iraq, she said, “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”
She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn’t know it’s about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate’s views on “God, guns and gays” ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.So let’s be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can’t tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.
Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
I don’t doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn’t just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn’t just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn’t just echo McCain’s pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.
So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, “women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,” so he may be voting for Palin’s husband.
Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.
Republicans may learn they can’t appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.
And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.
This could be huge.
Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women’s Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama
Source: LA Times.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Interview/Debate, Palin, Palin No Experience
I finally saw her interview with Charles Gibson. I am flabbergasted that anyone could have watched that interview and still have positive views of Palin. What is it that I am not seeing? Besides her position which is overly aggressive and hawkish, she did a TERRIBLE job on the interview. This is a woman who can’t think on her feet— she just kept repeated the talking points in the same way over and over again when Gibson was trying to get a more specific answer (ex. she said “we cannot second guess” Israel at least three times when it was clear that Gibson was not happy with the answer). Yeah, i realize you got to stick to your points, but you have to be able to sound responsive too.
Plus, (and this is what really baffles me about everyone talking about how good she is about speaking), she was clearly uncomfortable and tense. I would like to see her on the Dailey Show, because that would be a great interview.
Frankly, I could have looked as (un)knowledgeable about foreign affairs as she did. I think Gibson was appropriately aggressive, though. Good for him (I especially liked his response “National Security is a whole lot more than energy.” Alright!!!). The only thing I wish he would have done was pushed her more on her statement that the attack on Georgia was absolutely unprovoked. Because that was stupid. And again, shows she is slow on her feet. Russia wasn’t just sitting around one day and said, hey, lets attack Georgia. Thats fucking Ridiculous.
The scandals swirling around Palin, and the questions they raise regarding McCain’s poor judgment, are all over the front pages this morning, and I couldn’t be more delighted. There’s something eminently satisfyingly about the exposed hypocrisy of the Christian Right up in arms defending Palin’s unwed 17-year old daughter Bristol’s pregnancy.
Rick Scarborough, a founder of the conservative group “Vision America” was quoted in the New York Times, in defense of Palin’s daughter, saying “Families get in trouble all the time” – a euphimism for kids have sex and girls get pregnant all the time. Of course they do. Particularly when their children are not taught safe sex. How can the religious right insist on abstinence only campaigns in the same breath as they acknowledge that families get into trouble all the time?
One would think that, after recognizing this problem, and the failure of the abstinence only campaign to solve it, the religious conservatives would wake up and try a different tack, if for no other reason than for the well-being of their own children and families. One would think they would try to curb this problem by say, providing condoms and educating children on birth control. Clearly, telling their children not to have sex – with nothing more – is not working. Bristol’s pregnancy is just the latest proof of the failure of the abstinence only message. Kids have sex. It’s (an unfortunate) reality.
But, that’s not the whole of the scandal swirling around Bristol’s pregnancy. Apparently there are rumors that Bristol is not even pregnant now, that she was never pregnant, and that Palin’s supposed fifth child, Trig, who was just recently born with down syndrome is not Palin’s baby, but rather her daughter Bristol’s. People are saying no one new about Palin’s supposed pregnancy until a month before she allegedly gave birth b/c she was not showing, and for the 5 months before the birth, her daughter Bristol was yanked out of school allegedly b/c she had mono. Mono. For five months. Right before her mom has a baby after not looking pregnant for the preceding 9 months. Ok. Is it just me, or is the Republican Convention looking more and more like a desperate soap opera?
The facts relating the two pregnancies are not really a concern to me in and of themselves, however, they do raise serious questions about McCain’s judgment. Picking a vice presidential running mate is the first major decision McCain took as part of his bid for the presidency, and by many accounts, it has been a huge error in judgment. According to reports, McCain did almost no vetting of Palin prior to choosing her as his running mate. Alaskan officials are saying that – across the board – no one was asked about Palin or her background prior to Palin’s candidacy being announced.
Did McCain not understand that in picking Palin he was picking the person next in line to be leader of the (free) world? How can people even contemplate voting for McCain when he was willing to put this country into the hands of a person with almost no experiencewho is already surrounded by controversy? Did McCain not get the memo that picking the V.P. is serious business, that this country has enough problems at the moment, and that the next administration has to focus on fixing the country’s problems, not dealing with internal scandals?
And let’s just talk for a moment about what McCain’s choice of Palin says about his view of female voters. According to McCain aides – who have been quite open about the motivations behind picking Palin as the last minute choice - McCain picked Palin to capture “disaffected Hilary supporters,” the people who loved Hilary and wanted her elected over Obama. Hilary is a liberal, who supports choice, universal healthcare, equal rights, and a solution to the environmental crisis, who has many, many years of experience as Senator in addition to her 8 years in the White House as Bill’s first lady. Palin is an extreme religious conservative who is anti-choice and wants to drill in Alaska; her experience consists of being Mayor of a town not much larger than my highschool, and less than 2 yeas of experience governing a State with a population the size of Austin, Texas. In short, other than her sex, there are no similarities between Palin and Hilary.
So, why on earth did McCain think that disaffected Hilary supporters might vote for Palin? Does he really think that women are so stupid that they will vote for Palin just because she is a girl? Hate to break it McCain, but women are far more sophisticated than that. His ill-advised, unvetted, and last minute choice of Palin was an insult to female voters and an insult to the country. Nice work. I can’t wait to see what he does next. At this rate, the election is going to be a slam dunk for Democrats.
-BC
Filed under: Palin
Last night, I was feeling a slight touch of sadness about Obama picking Biden. I understand the pragmatic choice: The most Obama could have done to help his campaign through the selection of the V.P. was to pick an old, white, experienced man as his running mate, and he did it. I’m confident that Biden will help Obama’s campaign and I’m equally confident that the country will be much better off with Obama in the White House than without him (and certainly much better off than if McCain were to take office), and therefore I’m resigned to supporting his choice.
Despite the positive, pragmatic nature of his decision, a tiny part of me became less interested in his campaign because of his choice, because in one way it does seem to be more of the same. One black man, one white man, yet their both men, again. I had mixed feelings on the way Hillary ran her race, but through it all I felt a certain level of inspiration at what she had achieved, and the possibility of what she could achieve. Obama and Hillary running together – a dream I gave up finally with Biden’s pick – might not have been the safest choice for Obama, but man would it have been inspiring, dramatic, and exciting.
I’m sure if Obama had stuck to his guns and gone with something new and different – i.e. a powerful, articulate, intelligent woman in the White House (not in First Lady status) – McCain’s choice would have been quite different. Face with Obama and Hillary on the ticket, McCain would have drilled in to the lack of experience on Obama’s part and the hatred of Hillary on the part of the religious right. For my part, I was concerned that the deep anti-Hillary sentiment might have caused serious harm to Obama’s bid for the White House, which is why I understand why he chose Biden over Hillary (that and apparently he and Hillary didn’t get along).
But, Obama didn’t pick Hillary, he picked and old white guy, so what does McCain do? He picks a young mother of 5 to be his running mate. My mouth dropped open this morning when I saw it and for a moment I felt real concern that this obvious ploy to pander to disaffected Hillary supporters might actually work out for McCain. I mean, even me, who is strongly in Obama’s camp, despite feeling a little blah over his V.P. choice, felt the slight pull towards having a female candidate, at least in my initial reaction to the news.
Then, I started doing some research. Sarah Palin has been Governor of Alaska for less then two years, and before that she was a mayor of a tiny small town. McCain put someone with hardly any experience a step away from the White House. In addition, and unsurprisingly, she’s anti-choice and she supports massive drilling in Alaska. When is the country going to wake up and realize that our addiction to oil is not helping us, and that we need a sustainable solution that will allow us to break the addiction, not just another quick fix? Basically, she’s Bush in a skirt suit. Nothing new, and only more of the same that we’ve experienced these last 8 years.
I’m glad we have reached the point that picking a female running mate looks like the best strategic choice to the Republicans. I really hope, however, that Biden eats her for breakfast in the debates (just like Hillary would have, had Obama chosen her instead of Biden).
-BC
