Bristol Palin’s Pregnancy Angers Me

You know, I can make a personal decision not to talk about the fact that Gov. Sarah Palin’s 17-year old daughter, Bristol Palin, is five-months pregnant. I have no desire to exploit or criticize a 17-year old girl. But it doesn’t matter what decision I make. The Palins made the decision to turn this into a campaign issue when they accepted the nomination. The McCain campaign says that they knew about this and were okay with it. They are blaming left-wing blogs for forcing them to make this disclosure through our rumor-mongering about Sarah Palin’s spring pregnancy. Do they expect us to believe that they could have avoided disclosing that Bristol Palin was pregnant if only a few diarists had not been spreading around conspiracy theories?

Let me disclose something. Bloggers and progressive activists talk to each other and strategize together. We didn’t want to touch the Sarah Palin pregnancy story with a 10-foot pole and the overwhelming consensus was to strongly discourage anyone that was running with the rumors. These rumors were started in the spring by Republicans in Alaska and not by the progressive blogosphere. We stifled the story as much as we could without deleting people’s diaries.

Even now, go over to Atrios and you’ll see him asking the media to back off of the story about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy and to please respect her privacy. That’s our first instinct because we have progressive values. People’s sex lives should be private. We know of gay Republicans whose privacy we respect because they do not engage in hypocrisy and vote against gay rights. The child of a politician, especially a minor, is off limits, even when all can see the natural consequences of opposing contraception and promoting abstinence-only education. Some of us won’t be able to resist pointing out that hypocrisy. But I hope we will all do our best to give Bristol Palin her privacy and her dignity.

What this revelation does is make me angry. I’m angry that John McCain did not vet his running mate. I’m angry that Sarah Palin didn’t put her daughter first and decline the invitation to run for higher office. I’m angry that a 17-year old girl has been interjected into our national conversation over who would make a better team to run our country. I’m angry that the Republicans are trying to blame this revelation on left-wing bloggers who went out of their way to be respectful and live up to our own values.

This is tabloid politics. This is not serious politics. And it pisses me off.

Palin’s Family Values

The GOP’s Veep candidate is an evangelical Christian. Which makes you wonder why her 17 year old, unmarried daughter is already pregnant:

ST. PAUL, Minnesota: The 17-year-old daughter of the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, is pregnant, Palin said Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Bristol Palin, one of Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Senator John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision to keep the baby on her own, McCain aides said. […]

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support,” the Palins said.

Gee, and I thought only liberal, secular parents without values had problems with their kids having sex during their teenage years. Meanwhile, what a great vetting job the McCain team has done on their choice for the VP slot, Governor Palin. Gives me great confidence that they can run the country in exactly the same way the current administration has done for the last 8 years. With Christian love, forgiveness and charity for — well, for Conservative American Republican Christians, even when they commit a few sins here and there that the Ten Commandments and your local fire-breathing preacher says are all the fault of secularism and liberals and Hollywood and those liberal Christians who aren’t really Christians at all.

As for that vaunted Christian charity, is there any to go around for anyone else in the US of A? Do I really need to ask? But hey, do respect Governor Palin’s family’s privacy about this matter. And for God sake’s don’t blame her for the sexual sins which another member of her family committed. That’s strictly reserved for Democrat Women, after all.

Update [2008-9-1 13:45:0 by Steven D]: It seems her pregnancy is all the fault of liberal bloggers, anyway. Just as I suspected, I’m to blame. At least I’m not the only one.

MLK Jr. and Barack Obama.

As the ringing oratory of Barack Obama at Mile High Stadium came to an end and the celebrations began with fireworks and festivities, it became apparent to even the most rabid Republican from McCain’s crowd that one of the fundamental pillars of American society was under assault and the ground was moving under their feet.

Forty one years before Barack Obama’s speech,Martin Luther King,Jr.in a speech at the Riverside Church challenged the notion that the United States had the moral authority to invade Vietnam and kill millions of its people.That challenge cost him his life because MLK too had tread upon the implicit authority of the White Power structure to wage war against the black,brown,yellow and red skins at home and carry that war over to foreign shores using the same oppressed minorities in the US as mercenaries in wars they had no say in initiating.It was his identification of American blacks with the Vietnamese that triggered the wrath of the powerful.

Although times have changed,Barack Obama’s oratory has created panic in the halls of the Republican Party which has responded with the anointing of Sara Palin, a Christian fundamentalist,gun lover and abortion opponent to stem the tide of Democratic resurgence.

The message from McCain-Palin is that America is a White Male Christian dominated nation and you are playing with fire if you challenge that fact.

Palintology: Dragging Sarah Palin Through the Mud, Part II

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

At my site (MLW), people went berserk over Sarah Palin pregnancy and her choices per that pregnancy. I lost my shit:

Judging this woman’s GYNECOLOGICAL and OBSTETRICAL DECISIONS under the aegis of judging her fitness as a VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE?

IF IT WERE THE REPUBLICANS SAYING THESE THINGS and SHE WERE A DEMOCRAT?

WE’D BE SCREAMING FUCKING BLOODY MURDER AND YOU ALL FUCKING WELL KNOW IT.

Stop for one fucking minute and take a breath and be intellectually honest with yourselves.

How DARE we be judging what this woman did or didn’t do with her fucking uterus?

Jesus motherfucking christ.

Is this Really Excellent News for McCain?

It’s true that the Republicans never really wanted to give Bush and Cheney primetime speaking slots at their convention. They know that their former heroes are less popular than a case of genital herpes. So, it’s excellent news for John McCain that Hurricane Gustav has wiped away the first day of the convention and, with it, the presence of the dynamic duo. But let’s not get carried away. People don’t need to see Bush and Cheney in Minnesota to remember that they’d rather have the clap than see them running the country for even one more day. McCain gains very little by their absence. He loses much more with the loss of 25% of his infomercial time and all the accompanying hype from the national press.

Most of all, Hurricane Gustav has reminded everyone just why they hate Bush and Cheney more than they would a bout of chlamydia. It has conjured up dormant feelings of outrage. It has provided Democrats an opportunity to remind people that John McCain was eating birthday cake with the president in Arizona while people were floating dead in the flood waters of the 9th Ward.

It appears that the levees are holding in The Big Easy, which is excellent news for everyone. And, therefore, it looks like the Republicans should be able to resume their convention activities by no later than Wednesday. That’s good, because no one has one clue about who Sarah Palin is or what might compel John McCain to place her a heartbeat away from the presidency. They’ll need Wednesday to introduce her to the country.

But will Wednesday be enough? The Hurricane has wiped out two-to-four days of coverage that would otherwise have been devoted to Palin. They’ll never get another comparable opportunity to have her in the limelight. That strikes me as a problem. It strikes me as more of a problem than the absence of Bush and Cheney is a solution.

I know that whatever happens is always excellent news for the Republicans and also a reason why we can never leave Iraq, but people need to exercise a little more nuance in their interpretation of events.

Getting Cranky with The Times

Cross Posted from the European Tribune

In the last two weeks I have had half a dozen Letters to the Editor published in the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Sunday Tribune on the topics of the South Ossetia crisis and the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.

The Editors of those papers seem to delight in publishing letters which are sometimes scathingly personal in response.  This is unusual in Ireland as the laws of libel are fairly strict and I am not a public figure.

I don’t have a particular problem with this (as I don’t have much of a reputation to lose) although my family and friends do seem to think this is all evidence of advancing dementia on my part.  Apparently only cranks and serial complainers write Letters to the Editor.

I do have a problem, however, when a paper then refuses me a right of reply to such personalised criticism – as The Irish Times recently did.  Eventually, after a letter suggesting I might seek redress by other means, my response was printed.

Now, however, the Irish Times have printed another personalised critical response from one of my antagonists.  I’m beginning to think the Letters page editor is either very sore at me, or is engaging in the favourite Irish pastime of needling people in the hope of provoking an intemperate outburst.
It’s probably all in a good cause if it provokes a certain amount of discussion of two key issues, and it’s not as if the stances I have taken aren’t likely to be controversial in some quarters. I’m just surprised at the quality of the letters The Irish Times, in particular, often seems to publish. Many of my best letters (it seems to me) never make it into print, and an awful lot of truly awful ones seem to make it through.

I once complained against the rule that no verse was allowed by writing a letter as follows:

Prosaic Instructions to Irish Times Letter Writers

Dear Madam, Editor, Irish Times
You state that within the bounds of taste
And the avoidance of libel crimes
You will wide ranging views embrace
You further advise that we be terse
Lest our efforts should go to waste
But why the statement that no verse
Will ever your letters pages grace?

Needless to say, it wasn’t published.

On another occasion I empathised with another correspondent aggrieved that her letters weren’t being published:

Moving on to bigger things – The Irish Times – Wed, Feb 20, 2008

Madam – Ita McCormack (February 14th) is under the quaint delusion that letters in The Irish Times are published on merit, regardless of the title or prestige of the signatory. From experience, I can share with her the real guidelines which must be followed:

1. Never criticise The Irish Times itself.

2. Do not depart too far from the “dominant narrative” as contained in Irish Times Editorials.

3. Never antagonise the Letters Page editor by demanding a right of reply when you are criticised by name on the Letters page.

4. Sarcastic or silly one-liners have priority.

5. If writing a longer letter on a more serious and necessarily complex subject, always lend your letter some spurious authority by signing it as President of the Lesser Spotted Bumpkins Society or some such worthy organisation, or by claiming to be a “think tank” such as “Libertas”, which is anything but a think tank as a simple perusal of its website will confirm.

Failing the above, write instead on some serious online forum which is not limited to contacts of the small-minded coterie which now runs The Irish Times and seeks to pass itself off as a serious forum for open debate. Most of us have long realised that it is anything but and have moved on the bigger and better things elsewhere. – Yours, etc,

Needless to say, the Irish Times edited out my explicit reference to The European Tribune in the last paragraph of the above letter.  Are they really afraid of competition from The European Tribune?

Previous Letters and responses in the current series of controversies have been published here in Anti-Americans should stop masquerading as anti-war [SECOND UPDATE]
From NO to maybe on Lisbon and   Bringing new users to The European Tribune

For those not yet bored by the South Ossetia controversy, I include the Letter of my latest detractor below:

Aftermath of war in Caucasus – The Irish Times – Mon, Sep 01, 2008

Madam, – Frank Schnittger (August 25th) claims that “evidence indicates” that Georgia’s US lobbyist Randy Scheunemann secretly encouraged Georgia’s actions in South Ossetia.

Well, I haven’t seen a shred of evidence to support his claim about Mr Scheunemann. And the assertion that war may have occurred to help give John McCain a “bounce” in the polls is one of the weirdest things I have yet read on the conflict. The overwhelming evidence available is that Russia has been destabilising and provoking Georgia for years.

Mr Schnittger is right about the considerable interdependence between western and eastern Europe. However, Russia’s intimidation of its tiny neighbours and former colonies has cast a shadow over east-west co-operation.

– Yours, etc,

SEAN STEELE, Kilfenora Road, Kimmage, Dublin 12.

My response, not yet published, is as follows:

Madam, – SEAN STEELE (Letters 1/9/08)  says he hasn’t found “a shred of evidence” to support my contention that John McCain’s principle foreign policy adviser and potential National Security Adviser, Randy Scheunemann, is implicated in the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia.  

Well, if he doesn’t believe me, perhaps he will believe Pat Buchanan, former US Presidential candidate and doyen of US arch-conservatives since Ronald Reagan, who has accused Randy Scheunemann of Treason – see Pat Buchanan – “And None Dare Call it Treason”, Yahoo news, 22 August, http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20080822/cm_uc_crpbux/op_337140

He writes there that Scheunemann “..is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man”.  

“..Not only did Scheunemann’s two-man lobbying firm receive $730,000 since 2001 to get Georgia a NATO war guarantee, he was paid by Romania and Latvia to do the same. And he succeeded”

“Scheunemann’s resume as a War Party apparatchik is lengthy. He signed the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) letter to President Clinton urging war on Iraq, four years before 9-11. “

“Scheunemann also came close to succeeding with Georgia. “Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying to protect Scheunemann’s client, who launched this idiotic war the night of Aug. 7. That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American democracy….”

“U.S. backing for his campaign to retrieve his lost provinces is what Saakashvili paid Scheunemann to produce. But why should Americans fight Russians to force 70,000 South Ossetians back into the custody of a regime they detest? Why not let the South Ossetians decide their own future in free elections?”

Why indeed.  And if it doesn’t make sense for the USA to restart the Cold War (or indeed a hot World War) over South Ossetia, why ever should Europe, Ireland, or indeed Mr. Steele wish to do so?

Perhaps other contributors here might like to share their experiences of writing Letters to the Editor, and whether you think it is worth the effort.  Frankly, I only do so now when I have already written a diary on a topic, and want to put a synopsis of the argument to a wider public.

Is the Mainstream Media a waste of space, or an important means of reaching a wider audience?  Does the message get diluted in a wider forum where you inevitably have to argue your case from within the context of the dominant paradigm if you want to have a good chance of being published?

What are the dos and don’ts of LTE writing?  And are we about to be overtaken by video blogs in any case?

Biden’s Big Mouth

The right-wing is going to be all over this. It’s all innocent. Joe Biden acknowledged the obvious…that Sarah Palin is good-looking…better looking than he is. He engaged in a little self-deprecation and had a little chuckle about how he’s not what he used to be. But the danger is that he’ll come across as patronizing. He wasn’t being patronizing but it’s so easy to cross that line with a candidate that is so clearly unfit for the job. Biden cannot afford to talk down to Palin and treat her like the token candidate that she is. It will infuriate a lot of women.

Biden is famous for saying things that are a little off, or that cross the boundaries of propriety. That is really the only main concern I had about him as a potential running mate. Yes, I disagree with him on some foreign policy issues and I really did not appreciate his vote for the bankruptcy bill. But it was his proclivity for the gaffe that disqualified him in my book. I don’t see this as a big gaffe. It’s a small gaffe and it should not be repeated even once for the duration of the campaign. Sarah Palin is not any more qualified than Michael Brown or Harriet Miers. Her good looks are neither a plus or a minus and should not be a topic of discussion for Obama or Biden.

HRW: Georgia admits to dropping cluster bombs

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Human Rights Watch – Georgia admits to dropping cluster bombs

GENEVA – A prominent human rights group says Georgia has admitted dropping cluster bombs in its military offensive to assert control over the restive province of South Ossetia.

Human Rights Watch says it has received an official letter from Georgia’s Defense Ministry that acknowledges use of the M85 cluster munition near the Roki tunnel that connects South Ossetia with Russia.


A mine expert inspects a cluster bomb with its bomblets in Lebanon.   (Keystone)

The M85 is the same weapon that was used extensively by Israel in its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

HRW arms division researcher Bonnie Docherty told reporters in Geneva that Russia undoubtedly used cluster munition in several places during the conflict. However, Russia has denied using the weapon.

Israel’s Mercenaries in Georgia

Swiss welcome cluster bomb ban

(SwissInfo.com) May 29, 2008 – Switzerland has welcomed the draft treaty to ban cluster bombs adopted by more than 100 states meeting in the Irish capital, Dublin. The accord has also been hailed by the Swiss-run International Committee of the Red Cross, which described it as a major step forward for the protection of civilians.

However, the Swiss defence ministry said it regretted that the major producer countries of the bombs, including the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel did not attend the meeting.

The head of the Swiss delegation at the talks, Ambassador Christine Schraner, described the Dublin result as a “decisive step”. Switzerland had made “necessary concessions” and that the convention would improve international humanitarian law.

The agreement, reached after ten days of talks, outlaws the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster bombs. It also includes a commitment to remove cluster bombs from national arsenals within eight years and to provide for the welfare of cluster bomb victims.

Campaign to stop producing cluster bombs

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Give Terrorists a Break .. It’s Ramadan

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Military halts offensive in Pakistan for Ramadan

ISLAMABAD (AP) – Pakistan suspended fighting in the volatile northwest for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and some of the 300,000 people displaced by air strikes and gunbattles started packing up belongings to return to their shattered homes.

The military warned, however, that any provocations in the Bajur tribal region, a rumoured hide-out of Osama bin Laden near the border with Afghanistan, would bring immediate retaliation.

Pakistan’s five-month-old government at first tried peace talks with militants, but those efforts bore little fruit. It has turned to force in recent weeks, including using helicopter gunships and jets to strike suspected insurgent hide-outs.

The operation in Bajur began in early August. Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said it has killed more than 560 insurgents. Mr. Malik did not commit to a formal end to the operation but said an estimated 300,000 people displaced from Bajur could return to the region “without any fear.”

Some started gathering their belongings from sweltering, mosquito-infested relief camps so they could go home for Ramadan. But others, barely scraping by, said they could not afford to make the journey and would remain with their families in cramped tents for the holy month.

Defence analyst Talat Masood said the suspension of massive military operations in Bajur, which began in early August, risked squandering any gains made by security forces so far.

“Definitely it will give a fair chance to the militants to regroup, consolidate their strength and stage a come back,” he said. “This has happened in the past.”

Bajur has been the primary focus of military operations against insurgents, though there have also been clashes in the northwestern Swat Valley, a formerly popular tourist resort.

It was not immediately clear whether authorities were also suspending fighting there, but Taliban militants said, in any case, they intended to keep up their activities.

“This is not a war, but jihad, and this is our faith that rewards for good deeds and that is multiplied during the holy month,” said Muslim Khan, a Taliban spokesman in Swat.

Afghan and US-led forces kill over 220 militants in Helmand province

KABUL (AFP) – Afghan and international forces killed more than 220 militants over the past week in the country’s insurgency-wracked south, the US-led coalition said in a statement.

The militants were killed in several clashes from August 25-30 in Helmand province, where Taliban rebels control several districts, the statement received late Sunday said. Afghan and US-led forces suffered no casualties.

ANSF and coalition forces were attacked repeatedly by militants.

Kabul Raid Kills 2 Children –
U.S. troops backed by Afghan intelligence agents

See also my earlier diary –
US Bombing: 60 Children Among Afghan Dead

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."