Oh wow, Palin is a liar!

I cannot believe how many times I watched her lie tonight. I think I need a shower.

Palin said "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... 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."

The truth is that Mayor Palin hired one of Ted Steven's lobbyists and sent him to D.C., where he sent back $27 million federal dollars to her podunk hamlet of Wasilla. The truth is that Govenor Palin supported the Bridge to Nowhere until it was being mocked on a national level. The truth is that while Palin has been govenor, Alaska has requested more per capita federal earmarks than any other state in the nation.

Palin said that Obama hasn't authored any bills.

I suppose that for her, working with Richard Lugar to stop illegal shipments of WMDs isn't important. I suppose to Palin, working in the state senate to stop racial profiling and working to ensure that interrogations are videotaped (so there's no question as to what happened) is not important. I suppose the ethics reform legislation Obama introduced with Sen. Feingold just doesn't exist for Palin.

Actually, I take that back. I suppose that Palin is actually just a liar.

Palin said that Obama would raise taxes. Then she went on to list a boring and exhaustive litany of every kind of tax there is, and claimed Obama wants to raise it.

I'm not going to both to list this all out right now. I'll remind you that
a) Palin is a liar,
b) you can go to http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/a_new_stitch_in_a_bad_pattern.html and see just what Obama's tax plan is and how much the McCain campaign lies about it, and
c) you can go to http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/issues/issues.taxes.html if you want a very brief comparison of the McCain and Obama tax plans.

Palin said she would tell us "exactly what a Mayor does." But all she could tell us was that "unlike a community organizer, she had actual responsibilties." As a community organizer, Obama was responsible for organizing a public housing project with a population comparable to Mayor Palin's hamlet, and working with them on job training, community infrastructure needs (like road maintenance, asbestos removal, etc.)

Since Palin couldn't be bothered to keep her commitment and tell us the duties of the Wasilla mayor, perhaps I can help. See, it's amazing what you can find on google. http://www.codepublishing.com/AK/Wasilla/Wasilla02/Wasilla0216.html#2.16

Hmmm...she attended meetings. She was the ceremonial head of the city. She enforced city law and proposed budgets, but didn't actually get to make city law or pass the budgets. She was an an administrator with figurehead duties.

How many lies do we really need to hear this woman say?

Lazy blogging day

I was going to write a post on John McCain's many flip flops. However, I'm not feeling particularly perky today, and this is much easier and more amusing.

McCain thinks it's funny when a rabid right-winger calls Hillary a bitch

So you PUMAs are standing up for Hillary...how?

Jesus Obama the Messiah

Why is it that there are a certain group of right-wing nutsos that insist on calling Obama "The Messiah" or "Jesus Obama"? Isn't that blasphemy if you're a believer?

Does Palin want to have her cake, or eat it?

So, Bristol Palin is keeping her baby. In the words of Madonna, "uh, I'm gonna keep ma bay-bay!"

Please forgive the strange channeling of Madonna. I can only assure you that it happens infrequently.

The Republicans would like us to ignore this story. After all, it's a private family matter, right? No one else's business, right?

But wait.....did anyone mention this whole "private family business" line to Sarah Palin?

I mean....why is her knocked-up teen private family business that has no bearing on Palin's character/values/judgement, but the fact that her teen is keeping the baby proof of her supposedly superior character/values/judgement?

Why is Palin's decision to give birth to her most recent child somehow proof of her character/values/judgement, and not "personal family business that is strictly off-limits.?" Isn't exploiting your newborn's disability for political gain kind of disgusting? I think it is. She's essentially saying "Look at how messed up my kid is and I still kept him. That's how you can tell I'm a hard-core conservative." And that's sick - to use your child to burnish your political credentials.

Look - if it's private, then Palin should have said nothing at all. "No comment - my family's business is their business only." Once she agrees to discuss it, and then uses it to make herself look even better to the fundies, it ceases to be private. Which is a real shame for her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend.

One other thing - apparently Sarah Palin is proud of her daughter's decision, and proud that she's about to become a grandmother. And good for her. But does she realize that it's nothing but dumb luck that her daughter is carrying around a baby and not HIV? Or a nice case of syphilis? Unprotected sex sometimes doesn't result in babies. It can result in death, or severe illness. Would she be crowing about her values in action (abstinence only education, for example) if her daughter brought home a virus instead of a pregnancy?



I'd like to offer a few additional observations here:

1) I think it's really interesting that Palin has indicated that she and her family will be providing her daughter and her-presumably-soon-to-be son-in-law with support. And it's great that they are both willing and able to do so. I wonder if Palin and her family are against providing support for girls in similar situations who do not have such a supportive family? Because when that support is organized and universal....it's called welfare. If you're truly pro-life, put your god dammed money where your mouth is. Quit bitching about welfare queens. Quit telling lies about how all the welfare mothers are "living large" while all the responsible people have to work to pay for their ignorant and immoral lifestyles.

And if that support is not organized and universal, why on earth should a ban on abortion be organized and universal? Again, put your money where your mouth is. It's somehow moral for you to force a woman to use her body to give life to a potential person, but immoral for someone to force you to give less than one cent out of each tax dollar you pay to the federal government for the TANF program? Why are your tax dollars private but every woman's body is public?

2) If Obama has a pregnant, unwed, teen-age daughter....there is no way he'd have the nomination. If somehow he managed to obtain the nomination, the Republicans would be all over him. "Look, there's the result of liberal values at work. Kids having kids. There's no way his daughter can support herself. If he wasn't rich his daughter would be sucking off the government teat. I wonder if she's going on Maury to find out who the baby's daddy is. " And so on.

Why the PUMAs need to grow up

As a woman, I am flabbergasted by all of the media attention given to the PUMA group that supposedly supports Hillary Clinton. In all of their shrill vows to never support Obama (they promise to either stay home on Election Day or vote for McCain), you rarely hear any sort of coherent reasoning. I suppose that if this election is close, their refusal to support the won-100%-by-the-rules Democratic candidate may be responsible for a McCain win.

Of course, I wonder if they understand that not only would they be virtually guaranteeing complete takeover of the Supreme Court by the right-wing nutsos in this country, but they would be pretty much responsible for the deaths of additional American men and women in Iraq, plus where ever else McCain decides that we ought to invade. Let's see - he's already expressed quite belligerent rhetoric toward Iran and Russia. Oh yes, North Korea too.

In the ramblings of PUMAs, sometimes you hear the assertion that the way in which the Democratic party conducted the primary contests was unfair. Of course, there wasn't a murmur about it being unfair specifically toward Senator Clinton until after it was obvious to ummm....EVERYONE (excepting apparently the PUMAs) that she was not going to be able to catch up to Senator Obama's delegate leads. The fact is, both campaigns fully knew about and agreed to the rules beforehand. Senator Clinton is an experienced politician, but Senator Obama's campaign staff just schooled Senator Clinton's staff. Obama's campaign was smart and strategic, and was able to exploit the fact that Senator Clinton and her supporters felt her nomination was inevitable. Senator Clinton ignored caucus states. President Clinton's mouth could not be controlled. Senator Clinton's staff bickered with each other and they became more interested in their own careers than Senator Clinton's success. Her vote in support of the Iraq war didn't help. Neither did her insistence on siding with McCain on the gas tax holiday gimmick or her "tough-guy" stance on foreign policy.

I, too, think that the idea that New Hampshire and Iowa are somehow entitled to vote first is completely bunk. Some also think that caucuses are bunk, and would prefer only primaries. I actually agree with that too, mostly because bringing a 2-year old to a caucus on a weeknight is not particularly fun.

For the record, I also happen to think that the Electoral College is bunk. I think the 21-year-old drinking age law is bunk. I'm sure I could come up with plenty of laws/rules that are unfair. However, in a civil society, you cannot violate the law/rules without expecting some sort of consequence. Michigan and Florida violated the rules. There was a consequence imposed on them. (Well, sort of. Kind of more like when your parents ground you for a month and then let you out after two weeks.) In any event, the appropriate way to deal with these issues is to petition for change. Become a delegate. Push for change in the party platform. Do something relevant. Working to overturn Roe v. Wade or bomb Iran (which is exactly what you do when you vote for McCain) is not going to help.

Sometimes you hear the "but women deserve it" argument. AKA "but it's our time". First of all, women do NOT deserve it. Neither do men. Neither do blacks. The idea that some group in history deserves the presidency due to a history of oppression is stupid beyond belief.

Face it folks. There are EVIL men, EVIL women, EVIL minorities, EVIL homosexuals, etc. in this world. The merit of an individual does not follow from victimization of a group.

Gender or race or sexual orientation alone are not good reasons to vote for someone. I wouldn't vote for Elizabeth Dole. I wouldn't vote for Sarah Palin. I wouldn't vote for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. I'm not saying these are evil people by the way. Just that I do not consider them worthy of my vote.

But "Hillary should have been the VP." Um, no. Senator Clinton's insistence on continuing the primary fight to the very bitter end virtually ensured she could not be selected as the VP. In order to do well in the last few contests, Senator Clinton (and her campaign, and her husband) said some very nasty things about Obama. She ensured that Senator Obama would look like the world's biggest wuss if he picked her. She ensured that the campaign "story" would be all about her and the drama between her and Obama if she was picked.

If Obama loses in a close election this fall, and the blame is attributed to PUMAs, the Democrats will probably not win another election for a really, really long time. There will be too much bitterness and spite to coalesce the party again around one candidate. There will be too much talk of "oh, too many racists in the Democratic party" on one side. Too much talk about sexism on another side. The media will feed the frenzy every election, running around and asking if anyone is pissed off about anything.

Abstinence-only oopsie

So Sarah Palin's 17-year old daughter, a senior in high school, is apparently 5-months pregnant. Sarah Palin supports abstinence-only education. Let's hope for her soon-to-be grandchild's sake that anything she taught her kids about child-rearing sticks better than the "don't have sex until you're married" message did.