Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Why Does Joe Biden Hate the Obama Campaign?

Obama Campaign ad "terrible":

In light of several negative ads put out by both campaigns, CBS’s Katie Couric asked Biden if he is disappointed with the tone of campaign, noting the Obama ad that derides McCain for admitting he doesn’t know how to use a computer.

"I thought that was terrible, by the way," Biden replied.

"Why'd you do it then?” responded Couric.

"I didn't know we did it,” Biden answered, “and if I'd had anything to do with it, we would have never done it.”

At the end of the ad a picture of Biden with Obama is displayed as Obama says “…and I approve this message.” Couric pointed out that – as with every campaign ad – Obama did approve it.

“I don't think anything was intentional about that,” said Biden. “They were trying to make another point.”

Well, it was, but even so, you're not supposed to say that.

Three hours after the interview aired, the Delaware senator tried to walk back the comments in a statement saying he had never seen the ad, that he was merely reacting to reports in the press and he knew there was nothing intentionally personal in it.

Oh, wel that's better, then.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

What's the Plan?

William Galston has some strong words for Barack Obama:

I'll get right to the point: You are in danger of squandering an election most of us thought was unlosable. The reason is simple: on the electorate’s most important concern – the economy -- you have no clear message, and John McCain has filled the void with his own.

But just yesterday my liberal friend told me all about Obama's reponse to yesterday's economic problems, a great six point plan for the economy. (He didn't know what the points were, but still, it was great.) So, what are those six points?

So, I googled "obama six point plan economy" I got some notes about a Bush six point plan from 2003, and an article from last March with an Obama six point economic plan. The only recent reference I could find was this:

Obama reiterated a six-point economic plan affecting Wall Street that included more oversight, transparency and streamlining of regulatory agencies, cracking down on market manipulation, and regulating institutions for "what they do, not for what they are."

Sounds pretty standard to me. What's McCain's economic plan? His site says:

John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan that will create millions of good American jobs, ensure our nation's energy security, get the government's budget and spending practices in order, and bring relief to American consumers. Read each of the sections below to learn how the McCain Economic Plan will help bring reform, prosperity and peace to America.

It goes on to outline plans for: workplace flexibility (I'm all for this, but not sure what the government's role in it can be without mandates), lower taxes on gas, government reform, support for small businesses, lowering barriers to trade, simpler taxes, etc. Again, sounds fine enough, but pretty standard.

What does Barack Obama's site say about his economic plan? (Off topic, but the first thing that I notice is that BarackObama.com takes me to a site where I have to register my name and contact information. I search around and low on the screen and very small is the button that allows me to skip this step- annoying. Moreover, his site is fancy and full of pictures of him and Biden bathed in heavenly light, and it is slow!). His plans involve basically what we have heard before- middle class tax cuts, windfall profits taxes, something about a Job and Growth Fund that I can't quite figure out, simplify tax filings, etc. Here's an interesting one: eliminate taxes on seniors making over $50,000/year. I can't quite follow that one- how much do seniors making that little pay in the first place? It can't be much, if anything at all. And even so, I would think that a family w/ kids in that pay range is probably better suited for needing such a tax break. Anyway, it goes on and on (and on and on). I didn't see any mention of a 6 point plan, though.

So, on the whole, I can see what Mr. Galston was saying- thereis no coherent message here. Unlike McCain's site, there is no summary and point by point issue, just pages of information that I can't imagine anybody sitting down and reading just out of curiosity.
Regardless of who will be our next president, it looks like we need to prepare for some pretty serious economic turmoil. See this video-report from The Onion: "Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close to Collapse."

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

McCain Lies?

Ann Althouse, who voted Obama in the primaries, takes a look at Byron York's defense of McCain's allegations about Obama's support for comprehensive sex education for little kids.

Read the whole thing, but take note, Obama does not come out looking good.

More Obama Camp Attempts to Shut Down Dissent

Here. Note that his side was offered the chance to respond, and refused.

What will become of the First Amendment under an Obama Administration?

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

If McCain Wins

As things begin to look better and better for McCain, I’m actually starting to get worried about the reactions that will follow if McCain does pull this one off. If he loses, oh, well, I don’t think that people on the right will be all that distraught- they’ll make a big deal about it, they’ll complain about it, but they’ll move on. Conservatives don’t put all of their trust in the government or worship their candidates, as a general rule, so the idea of having one that they dislike is tolerable to say the least. But, if McCain wins, as Russ Smith puts it:

I have no clue if or when that could happen, but I do have an opinion of what will follow in this country if McCain pulls off what so recently seemed the miraculous feat of becoming the country’s 44th president. Voter fraud, conspiracy, “sleazevertisements” (the preferred term of many left-wing bloggers), disenfranchised voters, the return of redneck chic; those will be the immediate cries of Democrats who thought the election was in the bag. Once again, scores of celebrities will claim they’re moving abroad (and inevitably won’t). And then the depression will kick in hard.

Silly and irrational as all of the Bush 2000 election rhetoric wound up being, I do think that it really hurt the country that so many people were so tied up in hatred of everything that he stood for the entire two terms. Had liberals not been able to tie themselves up emotionally in the idea that Bush’s entire presidency was illegitimate and unfairly won, then I think that the country would not have been so divided, and perhaps we could be in a better place, in terms of world support and the war efforts.

Here, if McCain wins, even if it is decisively, there are already too many ready made arguments (racism, redneck-ism, etc) that liberals can cling to in the same way that they have during the Bush presidency, and they are so tied up in Barack our savior that many simply cannot believe that he could lose this election on the merits. And the crying, and fussing, and gnashing of the teeth will be nearly intolerable.

Finally, Tucker Carlson, the witty veteran of cable television shows, who’s been mercilessly and unfairly maligned by left-wingers, expressed an opinion that’s close to my own. “Even those who supported Hillary in the primaries will scold the rest of us for voting against a black man. They’ll be shrill and self-righteous, more even than usual, and they’ll never stop. It’s almost enough to make you want to vote for Obama, just so we won’t have to hear them.”

Tucker’s a card, but you can’t argue that a McCain win, for liberals, will be the political equivalent of Black Friday back in 1929.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Stupidest Sarah Palin comment thus far: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

This has to get the award for the most outrageous Sarah Palin comment of the political season.

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican
party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots
of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America,
and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real
women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she
has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class
women.

Apparently, in Wendy Doninger's world, when the a baby is born, and they ask the usual "boy or girl" question, about half the time the answer will be, "Well, it has a vagina, but we'll have to wait until it forms a coherent stance on abortion to be sure, so you'd better just call it Jamie or Robin for now."

Update: couldn't resist- her picture- if that's a woman, well, can we just create a third sex for me, Palin, and the other hot right wing chicks?

Thursday, September 11, 2008

More on the Pig comment: Is any insult to a woman automatically sexist?

Instapundit did a poll asking whether the Lipstick remark was "a deliberate sexist smear" or "an inadvertent gaffe."

Can I think that Obama was referring to Palin as the pig (the referrence to the old fish later certainly appears to be McCain, after all), without thinking that it's sexist? Does "pig" have a special function as a sexist remark?

If we believe that it was to refer to Palin (and he's not just an idiot for not thinking of the obvious connection with the word lipstick), then I'm going to go with it was just a plain, stupid, insult. That doesn't make it any better in my book- it's juvenile and crude, but not neccessarily sexist.

Hah!

Obama's electorial map

Oh please, oh please!

Democrats threatening to shut down government over oil drilling debate:

The chairman of the House Democratic Caucus said Tuesday that House Republican
Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) would be the “author” of a government shutdown if
President Bush followed Blunt’s advice and vetoed any bill extending the federal
moratoria on new offshore oil drilling and shale-oil development. The moratoria
are currently set to expire on Sept. 30. “If Mr. Blunt’s recommendation to
the president is for a veto to force that, he’d be the author of the shutdown of
the government,” Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic
Caucus, said at a House Democratic leadership press conference attended by House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).


If the democrats really go through with this, I predict a republican landslide.

On 9/11

The History Channel is running a retrospective on 9/11 tonight. I’m recording it. As I look back over the last 7 years, it’s hard to believe that it was so long ago, but also, so short. So much as changed in my life since 2001. I was a newlywed, and a college student who didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. The highest job that I had reached was waitress, and I had never even considered the idea of law school.

As I look back, I think that I have forgotten a lot of the true, unbearable absurdity of that day. The dazed look around campus as I walked to class knowing that things are different now. The voice of my history professor, explaining that he couldn’t lecture that day, because this was going to be big, big, bigger than Pearl Harbor, he didn’t know what it would mean. Attempting to find some normalcy as I watched the news with some of my classmates while we stuffed envelopes for the Honor’s program, a promise to help that I had made seemingly a century ago.

I think that in a lot of ways, the human mind tries to gloss over these things and forget them. I think that its easier that way, to not dwell on the bad. And I’m not sure that I want to remember, to relive. But then, I think that in some ways it’s necessary. I think that it’s more human to remember, to not lose touch with what happened, and why. If I forget, then I am nothing, and I can do nothing to make it better.

I've been trying to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on the "lipstick on a pig" comment

(which can be found at Instapundit, Melissa Clouthier, Powerline, Althouse, Ace of Spades, or Hot Air.) After all, it is a common expression, and it made some sense in the context that he used it, but Rachel Lucas makes a darn good point:

Obama says it’s a common expression. Yes, yes it is. We all know that, and we
also all know that Palin’s “lipstick” line was hugely publicized and that Obama
good and goddamn well knew it too.
Obama is supposed to be a genius. A
whip-smart man of brilliance. A masterful wordsmith with soaring verbal and
intellectual skills.
The way I see it, you have precisely two possibilities
here, with a dependent conclusion for each:
(1) He did use it as a snide
reference to Palin. Which means he’s a dickhead.
or
(2) He did not use it
as a snide reference to Palin. Which means he’s not half as smart as his
superfans want to believe. If he didn’t know how it would be construed, then he
is RETARDED when it comes to nuance and anticipating political moves and all
that happy horseshit.


I simply can't argue with this one. I just can't.

To the arguement that it's a common expression (which, by the way, is it? Seems like it's a common expression that you would read in early 20th century literature about people who work on farms all day-how often does this phrase get used from someone who doesn't work around pigs on a regular basis? When was the last time you heard this phrase in general conversation? In general conversation from someone younger than, say, John McCain?), Rachel goes on to point out:

Which, of course, so is “that’s the pot calling the kettle black.” I’m
pretty sure that if John McCain used that Very! Common! Expression! in reference
to Obama, it would actually make the entire internet physically explode.

WTF?!

Joe Biden, you are an odd, odd man.

BOSTON -- Joe Biden said Wednesday that Hillary Clinton might have been a
better choice for the Democratic ticket.
Biden was defending Clinton after a
questioner at a fund-raiser said he was glad she wasn't selected as Barack
Obama's running mate.
''Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified
than I am to be vice president of the United States,'' Biden said. ''She is
qualified to be president of the United States of America. She is easily
qualified to be vice president of the United States of America, and quite
frankly, might've been a better pick than me.''
Clinton lost to Obama in the
party primary and some of her backers have resisted embracing Obama. AP

Of course, Obama knew that when he picked you, so what does that make him?

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Issues I'm to the left of Barack Obama on

I'll be the first to admit that the anti-gay statements are a big motivator, but I definitely think that the trend (can you call avoiding a topic a trend?) of liberatarianism on the gay issues is a good one.

This is just sad

Slate asks for dreams about Sarah Palin.

Would anyone in the world dare to admit to dreams about Barack Obama having a friendly beer with Osama, or shining your shoes and eating watermelon? Then why is it OK to discuss (and solicit) dreams about Mrs. Palin "as a scolding, ominous figure," urging one's "young son to kill Palin with a string bean," or about "a fashion show [where] Palin served her creme fraiche on little scooped corn chips?"

Peaceful protests for better schools: "Very selfish" says Chicago mayor

Paul Tough of Slate Magazine writes: (you might have to scroll down)
An unusual act of civil disobedience last week in Chicago: To protest inequities
in Illinois' system of school financing, James Meeks, a Baptist minister and
state senator, organized a boycott of the first day of school by 1,400 Chicago
public-school students, almost all of whom were black. The twist: That morning,
he bused them all to Northfield, a wealthy, mostly white Chicago suburb,
to the lavish campus of New Trier
Township High School
, a public school with four orchestras, a rowing club, a
course in "kinetic wellness," and AP classes in French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Latin, and Chinese. You know, your basic American public school. The Chicago kids lined up and tried to enroll for classes—symbolically, at least.
To their credit, the administrators at New Trier, as well as a few parents and students, welcomed the visitors with signs, snacks, and cool drinks. Every Chicago student who took part in the protest was invited to register at the school, but none of them will in fact be able to enroll because of New Trier's residency requirements. No
house in the suburbs, no spot in the school.Mayor Daley fulminated,
calling Meeks's protest "very selfish." But it was a peaceful demonstration and
by all accounts a successful one ("This is civil disobedience at its finest,"
one New Trier parent said).
As the Chicago Tribune reported:
"At issue is how much money schools spend per student. In a funding system
fueled largely by local property taxes, New Trier Township spent nearly $17,000
per student in 2005-06 ... while Chicago Public Schools spent an estimated
$10,400 per pupil."It's one of those basic facts of American educational life
that seem inevitable and yet impossible at the same time. On the one hand, of
course the wealthy burghers of Northfield are going to spend more on their
public schools than the poor residents of inner-city Chicago. On the other hand:
We're really going to send rich white kids to excellent, well-funded public
schools and send poor black kids to substandard, poorly funded public schools?
That's our plan for fixing public education in America?


Unfortunately, Mr. Tough focuses more on the money spent than on the actual way to fix it, the big V word (vouchers), but the point is clear. And Mayor Daley is threatened.

Kudos, by the way, to the New Tryer folks who offered their support.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

It's a bad time to be Barack Obama

From Hot Air:

With both Rasmussen and Gallup showing Barack Obama moving backwards even before the Republican Convention dropped its balloons on Andrea Mitchell, one can excuse the Democratic nominee for hearing footsteps. How desperate has he gotten? Looks like he’s playing the race card once again:


“I know that I’m not your typical presidential candidate,” Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told executives and employees of the Schott glass company Friday afternoon, “and I just want to be honest with you. I know that.”
“And I know that the temptation is to say, ‘You know what? …The guy hasn’t been there that long in Washington.,’ You know, ‘he’s got funny name,’ You know, ‘we’re not sure about him,’” Obama continued. “And that’s what the Republicans, when they say, ‘This isn’t about issues, it’s about personalities,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘We’re going to try to scare people about Barack. So we’re going to say that you know, maybe he’s got Muslim connections or we’re going to say that, you know, he hangs out with radicals or he’s not patriotic.’


Once again, Obama has resorted to a smear campaign against the McCain campaign. They have never –never — even hinted that Obama has “Muslim connections”. They have never made even a slight attempt to make his race an issue, despite this fourth repeat of this particular smear. Neither has the RNC nor any mainstream Republicans. In fact, the McCain campaign let go one staffer who only Twittered a link to a Jeremiah Wright video earlier this year.

If Obama wants to argue that some misdirected bloggers have made these kind of
attacks, he might have a point. But by that standard, the Democrats have
attacked Bristol Palin, smeared Sarah Palin about the maternity of her youngest
child, and questioned the mental capacity of John McCain. If Obama wants
to start making these kinds of accusations, then maybe he ought to get his own
house in order first.

Friday, September 5, 2008

More on Palin and Sexism

From The Volokh Conspiracy:

Daddies, Mommies, Politicians and Double Standards:

I was driving my baby daughter Eden to her four-month doctor
appointment this morning, when I heard reporter Anne Korblut of the Washington
Post on The Diane Rehm show defending the media's coverage of Sarah Palin and
her family. She said something along the lines of, "If Barack Obama had a
four-month-old special needs baby, and a seventeen year-old pregnant daughter,
I'd be the first to ask whether this is the right time for him to be running for
president."
Balderdash! Obama has two daughters, one born in 1998, the other
in 2001. Even if we acknowledge that mommies tend to do more of the parenting
than daddies, can we all agree that little girls need their daddies, and that
fathering little girls creates some moral obligation to spend time with them?
Good.
Since January 2005, Obama's family has lived in Chicago, while he
initially spent much of his time in D.C. working as a Senator, and then, since
last Spring, he has spent almost all of his time on the road campaigning. I'd be
surprised if he's seen his kids more than once a month during campaign
season.
Does this make Obama a less-than-ideal father? You bet it does. But
he's not running for Father of the Year, he's running for president. So it's
entirely proper that this has NOT been a political issue.
Enter Sarah Palin.
If any reporter, Anne Kornblut or otherwise, has asked Obama how he feels about
not participating in the raising of his children on a day-to-day basis, or what
will happen when he's president if one his girls is sick in the middle of the
night and is calling for daddy (as people have asked about Palin), I've missed
it.
I agree that it's hypocritical of the "traditional values" crowd to
suddenly lionize Palin, when they've been arguing for years that a mother's
place is with her small children. (Dr. Laura, to her credit, has been consistent
on this, and is duly critical of the Palin pick.)
But for the media to claim
that there's no double-standard in how they treat Palin's family obligations and
how they treat Obama's (or other male politicians, for that matter) just can't
withstand scrutiny. Either it's okay to delegate one's parenting
responsibilities to pursue political ambitions, or it's not.

I do disagree on one point: maybe some traditionalists think that it should be the woman that stays home, but I'll bet that most just want someone to stay home. Surely in the White House, Todd would stay home with the kids at least most of the time, so I don't see a problem there.

And moreover, John Edwards' wife is dying. If he had become president (and we're putting aside the issue of the affair, since we didn't know anything about it at the time), there is a good chance that she would have died while he was in office. They have two small children, who would have no mother at all in this case (and would surely be pretty distraught to boot). But I never heard anyone, anyone discuss or dare to ask what would happen in that case- whether Edwards would be too distracted to pursue his duties. Why? Because Edwards has a penis.

Running the speeches through the word cloud

This is just really neat.

Obama Agrees that the Surge Has Done A Lot of Good

This is really a good thing. As I've said before, I really want Obama to make good decisions. At least he has opened his eyes to the reality on the ground. Of course, as Instapundit points out:

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama
said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve
already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

Actually, I think it succeeded in ways that John McCain anticipated. And General Petraeus, who was mocked by Obama-supporting MoveOn as "General Betrayus."


Ironically, when thing began, I was in full support of whoever won the GOP ticket (well, except Ron Paul) almost entirely because of how important I felt that completing the war was to this country, and how dangerous and dumb it would be to pull out. Now, it is looking more and more like it won't matter one bit on that front who wins this thing.

Forget what's between your legs, it just doesn't matter anymore

According to N.O.W., all women must think alike:

A spokeswoman for the National Organization for Women, noting Palin’s opposition
to abortion rights and support of other parts of the social conservative agenda,
told Politico, “She's more a conservative man than she is a woman on women's
issues. Very disappointing."

First, I am so sick of this "women's issues" crap. Just say abortion and get it done with. Don't act like your vagina gives you some special monopoly on certain issues.

Second of all, does this person really think that being a woman means that you must agree with everything that she says? Wasn't the point of feminism originally to allow women to have choices and opportunity? Now, it's just "do what I say, think how I think, or you're not really one of us."

Fortunately, I think that most women who would dare to go against the NOW ideology are tough enough that this sort of insult is just silly and pitiful. Things like this really say a lot more about the speaker than they do about Sarah Palin. But it's still sad.

You know, back when I was a kid, I used to always think that I was going to grow up to be a feminist and join NOW. I just thought that that was the coolest thing ever- fight sexism! Yeah! Girls rule! Then I grew the hell up. Then I realized that feminists are generally nothing more than sad, pathetic people who are threatened by independent thought. The National Organization for Women has nothing whatsoever to do with women, it is only about liberalism.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Agonizing Decision?

Phyllis Chestler is extraordinarily melodramatic about her voting decision. A vote for a McCain and women lose their freedom, or a vote for Obama and the terrorists win:

Thus, here are some wrenching bottom lines: Do we vote to keep abortion legal and to stop the anti-Choice conservatives from taking over the Supreme Court–or do we vote to make sure that the American military is allowed to stop the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in their tracks? Can we really achieve both goals by voting for one candidate? If not, then what is the more pressing priority? For ourselves, for our country, for the world at this moment in history?

If American women retain the right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term–in my view, a prerequisite to female human freedom, what does this mean if the jihadists bomb the country back to the seventh century? If the jihadists triumph, American women will be forced to convert to Islam, to wear veils or burqas (body bags), and risk being stoned to death, hung, or honor murdered if they want to choose their own husbands, attend college, dress like modern American girls do, or convert to another non-Islamic religion.

Look, I care a lot about this presidential election, but I realize that it's less important than I'm making it- Roe v. Wade is unlikely to be overturned even with a McCain presidency, and even if it is, most states still have abortion rights of their own- it is not an all or nothing by any means. Moreover, even if abortion were to be outlawed across the land, this is not, as Ms. Chestler puts it, damaging to a "prerequisite to female human freedom." This is, in fact, the worst, most insulting type of defense of abortion- it requires 2 conclusions, both of which are demeaning to women and life itself- first, that women have no choice at all in the matters leading up to getting pregnant, and second, that carrying a child is a violation of your human freedom (a horrible thing), rather than a small miracle of human life (although it does bring to mind Obama's "punished with a baby" comment).

On the same side, if Obama wins, the Islamic terrorists don't automatically win, too. Yes, I think that there would be more danger, but the American people are tough, and I find it hard to beleive that, if by some horrible serious of events, terrorists were able to assert some form of control, we would not put up with it. We have refused to put up with far less. Furthermore, as we sometimes forget, Obama is an American, too, and he will do what he can to stand up to this. Yes, I think that he'd make some mistakes, and I think that those mistakes would increase the risk of an attack or similar, but I still think that he will avoid doing anything that would put us in the sort of position that Ms. Chestler describes.

When push comes to shove, not much is going to change, regardless of who gets elected, and change will come gradually, and we will have plenty of checks in place to prevent either man from making such a dramatic impact.

Yet another reason to vote McCain

From the republican party's platform:

The new document says the U.S. “will pay a fair, but not disproportionate,
share of dues” to the U.N., and “will never support a U.N.-imposed tax.”

So, where's that in the democratic platform?

Liberals live in the stone age on gender roles

I am really, really feeling disheartened on the ridiculous attacks against Sarah Palin. I don’t think that John McCain or anyone else could have anticipated the amount of attention these non-scandals would get, especially in the face of the real scandels involved in Barack Obama’s history. But even more disappointing are the number of critics of her for daring to be ambitious in the face of motherhood. Even from supposedly liberal female members of my own law school, I am hearing that she simply does not have the time to leave her responsibilities as a mother. Her husband’s role is completely overlooked.

One of the main objectives of my lawyer-like pursuits is that it would allow my husband and I to have a comfortable lifestyle on one income, so that he can stay home and raise children while I earn our living. We have decided that this would be the best way to raise a family based on our relative talents, personalities, and education. With a legal education, and hard work and ambition, I have always believed, I can rise to a high career level while our children still get full time parenting. There is no reason at all to believe that Mr. Palin is not just as capable a parent as Ms. Palin, yet she is the one that is faulted for being ambitious.

I hate the statements that say “you wouldn’t say that if it were a man,” but here, I think that it is true. I’ve never heard this sort of comments about a man. To hear such narrow minded, stone-aged views from supposed progressives is very disheartening.

See this:

And these are the snippets of the burgeoning Palin legend that dominated the
conversations we had over the weekend, at baby showers and backyard barbecues,
as they may have yours. Privately, the women we encountered sat in judgment of
Palin. Some were outraged that the mother of a special-needs baby accepted the
vice presidential nomination. Others were affronted at that outrage. Like it or
not, in whispers and sometimes shouts, this is what women do when they talk to
each other: We worry over our own choices and their effect on our families;
compare ourselves to other women; and then approve, or shrug, or condemn.

Men don’t worry about these things?

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

It's not about choice

Pro-"choice" is never really about choice It’s about do as I say. Guess what, the baby is there, it’s not about Bristol’s happiness anymore, it’s about taking care of the kid. Personally, I would prefer that the first choice in these cases would be adoption to a nice family, but I understand that this is a rare choice, so it’s hard to fault anyone for not taking it. If not, young Bristol and her fellow have a responsibility to grow up a little early and do what they can for him or her. That’s just the way it is.