Palin WTF?

Seriously....this person has been governor, for less than two years, of a state with a smaller population than the Twin Cities metro area. Prior to that, she was mayor of a town with a population less than 7,000 people. The Alaskan legislature meets for 90 days a year. And McCain is 72. And McCain talks about how important experience is.

I honestly don't get it. I mean, I know she has breasts and ovaries....but the Hillary supporters that are going to vote against Obama on "principle" were going to do so anyway. They didn't need to be led away on an estrogen trail.

And lucky us. From what I've read, she's often compared to Minnesota's own Michele Bachmann. Great. Apparently Palin would like creationism taught in science classes. The Republican party platform in Alaska indicates that "if evolution is taught, it should be presented as a theory." Note they say IF evolution is taught. Nutty.

Once Upon a Time, there was a maverick named McCain

The 2000 Presidential election was the first one that I had the opportunity to vote in. I knew that I was a practical progressive, but I wasn't exactly sure what that meant in terms of who I would be voting for.

My husband and I attended the Minnesota Green Party state convention. That was an absolute disaster. As much as I rail about the Democratic Party being fractured and unorganized, the Greens are much, much worse. While I don't wish to dismiss the hard work and dedication of the convention organizers, the event itself was a sad joke. Random, unrelated groups of people ran about, handing out fliers and shouting for freeing various prisoners, legalizing marijuana, banning plastics, etc. No one was running for Attorney General, so the organizers got on stage and begged for any random person to offer to run. Instead of voting to back Paul Wellstone, the Green Party voted to endorse a guy who's only coherent campaign promise was to "make half the Senate woman [sic]." I'm not sure how he intended to do that....and not sure if forced sex-change surgery or a Constitutional amendment would be the scarier prospect. My husband and I left the convention at that point.

Point being....I was disillusioned with the Green Party. I had started looking at the Greens because I was also unimpressed by the Democratic Party. Al Gore was about as exciting to me as Wonder Bread. Smushy, white, nothing surprising. While he wasn't particularly offensive to me, he didn't give me a whole lot to vote for.

I watched the Republican primary contest with interest. Now, I was pretty certain that I would be unlikely to vote Republican in the general contest. Most of the candidates stood for the standard Republican platform of:

• socializing business costs,
• privatizing business profits,
• inciting class warfare between the middle class and the poor in order to distract them while the rich take and eat the whole pie,
• promoting irresponsible military aggression, and
• prying into the private religious, sexual, and familial lives of the public.

But one of them....well, he seemed different. No, he wasn't a progressive. But he seemed to have some principled stands of his own. I didn't necessarily agree with all of his stands, but he seemed so firm in his convictions that he was attractive. He was McCain.

Back in 2000, McCain focused on:

• campaign finance reform,
• getting the Religious Right and their narrow litmus tests out of politics,
• refusing to attempt an overturn of Roe v. Wade,
• allocating the budget surplus to shore up Medicare and Medicaid, and
• moderate tax cuts that were not skewed almost entirely to the wealthy.

Of course, in typical Republican fashion, McCain was skewered for these stands. His war record, which is now unquestionable, was smeared. The drug addiction of his wife, which is now off-limits, was fair game. Questions of his temper and mental health, again, now off-limits for some reason, were raised. And even though there supposedly is no such thing as racism (or so the Republicans would have us believe), push polling was done, implying that McCain had a mixed race child out of wedlock.

If McCain had won the Republican primary, I would have had a tough decision to make in the general election. I didn't agree with McCain on everything, but I also didn't agree with Gore on everything. Nader was interesting but my experience with the Minnesota Green Party left me leery.

Alas, the McCain of 2000 wouldn't vote for the McCain of 2008. After all, he's your typical Republican. Tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for multi-national corporations, war without end, fear without end, you name it, McCain is for it now. I guess all fairy tales must eventually end.

Abortion - We might as well talk about it

My guess is that this is not going to be the only post about abortion on this blog. The issue is complex and divisive.

While there should be no need for me to say this, let me just offer up some personal information. I have never had an abortion. It is very unlikely that I would ever choose to do so. I, personally, do not feel that abortion is a choice I would make for myself in any circumstance I think it is likely I may find myself in. I have one son, and I am currently eight months pregnant with my second child. None of this is really anyone's business but mine (and my family) but I'm trying to avoid turning this discussion into a question of my personal choices by laying out the information up front.

Now that we have that out of the way....

I am pro-choice. Although the right may like to say this means I am pro-abortion, that is not true. I think that generally speaking, the fewer abortions there are, the better off we are as a country. I also personally think that the fewer unplanned pregnancies there are, especially as the result of sexual encounters between couples that are not strongly committed to one another, the better off we are as a country. I also think that my personal beliefs about "what is best" do not trump the law.

Anti-abortion activists say that abortion is murder, and therefore, it is appropriate for the state to outlaw abortion. I find that argument severely lacking in a legal sense.

Judith Jarvis Thomson offers an analogy in her 1971 writing "A Defense of Abortion." A variation of her argument would be this.

Suppose one night, Mary gets very, very drunk. She does many stupid things that night and makes many bad choices. Eventually, she passes out. She awakes to find herself in a hospital, hooked up to another person by various machines. She asks what has happened.

The hospital personnel inform her "Well, you made bad choices last night. Just before you passed out, you came up to this floor of the hospital, and entered the life support wing. We clearly labeled this wing, and provide multiple verbal and written warnings that if you choose to enter this wing, and you happen to have the ability to provide life support to someone in need, we will restrain you and hook you up to provide life support to another person. You had sufficient warning, but you made a bad choice anyway. "

"So now, you will need to stay here for the next 9 months. Your blood, ingested nutrients, etc, will be used for the benefit of this other human who will die without the life support your body can provide. While the risks are relatively low, it is possible that your life and health could be compromised by this. You almost certainly will suffer financial losses as a result. Your family and friends will know about your poor choices. Tough."

This analogy is similar to pregnancy in many ways. Yes, it is true - one would hope that by this day and age, the majority of women understand that sex carries a risk of pregnancy. And yet, some women make the abysmally stupid choice of having sex (or worse, unprotected sex) when they have no desire to have children.

However, there is a difference between killing someone, and refusing to support their life with the resources of your own body. If I walk outside and stab someone to death, I have murdered them. I actively stolen their life.

If I walk outside, and encounter someone that desperately needs a kidney just like mine in order to live, and I refuse to donate one of my kidneys, I have not murdered anyone. I have stolen nothing from no one. At worst, I have declined to use my body to support the life of another. And no one would suggest I have a legal obligation to do so.

In the case of a pregnancy, the legal obligation is even less. Pre-viability, there is no independent life to steal or deny. No one can guarantee that at the end of any particular pregnancy, the end result will be new life. Any woman who has experienced a pregnancy, and worried over every odd twinge, or blood spot, or odd feeling, knows just how uncertain life is. Approximately 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and other pregnancies may result in a stillbirth. If there is no legal obligation to provide the use of your body to another person to ensure they live, how can there be a legal obligation to use your body to provide the potential for life to what may, one day, possibly be another person?

The question becomes more complicated after the point of viability. I think that the basic framework that allows abortion in the 1st and 2nd trimesters, and places severe restrictions on abortion in the 3rd trimester is a very practical approach to this issue. Post-viability, the state has two lives to balance against one another. The woman has had 6 months to act to preserve her bodily integrity.

One reason why "Grab your crotch and grunt" is a crappy foreign policy

This is a short post - but perhaps it will provide some food for thought.

In Bush's 2002 State of the Union address, he named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the "axis of evil."

In 2003, the Bush administration began the invasion of Iraq.

North Korea and Iran subsequently began the aggressive pursuit of nuclear programs.

Coincidence - I think not.

Celebrity, or why the GOP is so darn jealous

The GOP strategy seems to be: If you can't beat them, mock them. Take the examples of the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. Bush cannot speak coherently (much less in a manner that inspires) to save his life. His public speaking skills seem to have stopped somewhere around perhaps the 7th grade-level. So, instead of demanding better from their candidate, the GOP mocked Gore and Kerry. Speaking intelligently is "elitist."

The same thing is happening in this election. Obama has inspired so many to become involved in the political process. On caucus night here in Minnesota, my husband and I marveled at the crowds of people standing in long lines, waiting for the opportunity to vote. Obama draws in enormous crowds, and is very inspiring.

McCain, on the other hand, inspires...um....no one. Why? It could be that those who were impressed by his maverick status are distressed by how he sold-out after getting trashed by Bush 8 years ago. It could be that the Religious Right is distressed by the fact that 8 years ago, he opposed overturning Roe v. Wade, and he said that Falwell and Robertson were "agents of intolerance," and now the Religious Right is uncertain as to whether they can trust McCain to do their bidding.

It could be because he's old. McCain turns 72 tomorrow. Average life expectancy for white men in this country is 75 years old. No one would be terribly surprised if he keeled over tomorrow, perhaps from a heart attack or stroke, or any of the other maladies that frequently strike the elderly suddenly. The right may not like to hear it, but the fact is, McCain is old. Really old.

Whatever the reason, the fact is that McCain can't draw the kind of crowds that Obama can and does, over and over again. McCain is just not as popular. So, the answer from the GOP is to mock Obama as a celebrity. Perhaps what they do not realize is that they are only preaching to their narrow choir. A tendency to mock others is not an attractive trait. It's juvenile. And someone who is 72 ought to have learned better by now.

Introduction

I am a practical, progressive, Minnesotan woman. I am a wife and mother of one (soon to be two). I work hard, as does my husband, and we are fortunate enough to live a middle-class lifestyle in a relatively safe and clean neighborhood.

Over the last 10 years, I have watched this country fall prey to the likes of Gingrich, Rove, Bush, and Cheney. I've watched them manipulate the electorate, convincing people to vote against their own economic self-interests, using lame and false Ayn Rand-like rhetoric. I've watched the Democratic party run hither and yon, afraid to tell the truth about the Republican party, for fear that someone will criticize them. And I just can't stand it anymore.

I will be sharing my thoughts on a number of issues. Many of them will be national, but some may be focused on Minnesota. In this blog, I intend to explain why I am a practical progressive, and why I feel the way I do about the issues that impact my state, my nation, and my world.

I welcome discussion in the comments section of this blog. However, please note: this is not Fox News. I don't want to hear any religious ranting. I don't want to hear "But Bill O'Reilly said...." I don't want to hear "black people are all gang-bangers." I hear enough of that nonsense. Therefore, I reserve the right to delete any comments as I see fit. I will not be deleting all comments that show disagreement with my positions, but I will delete ranting, racist, and other offensive contents. I also will delete spam.