Lovely, lovely, lovely meltdown
by KTKSeptember 1st, 2008
It’s just delicious watching the GOP meltdown. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch. Suddenly I’m enjoying the campaign.
As Greg Sargent at TPM has it:
On the same day that the Republicans were forced to dramatically cut back their convention activities, the Palin Meltdown unfolded with extraordinary speed. It’s worth pondering the totality of what happened today, in a mere half day…
* The news that Palin once backed the Bridge to Nowhere went national.
* It emerged that Palin has links to the bizarro Alaska Independence Party, which harbors the goal of seceding from the union that McCain and Palin seek to lead.
* The news broke that as governor, Palin relied on an earmark system she now opposes. Taken along with the Bridge to Nowhere stuff, this threatens to undercut her reformist image, something that was key to her selection as McCain’s Veep candidate.
* The news broke that Palin’s 17-year-old daughter became pregnant out of wedlock at a time when the conservative base had finally started rallying behind McCain’s candidacy. . . .
* Barely moments after McCain advisers put out word that McCain had known of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, the Anchorage Daily News revealed that Palin’s own spokesperson hadn’t known about it only two days ago. . . .
* Palin lawyered up in relation to the trooper-gate probe in Alaska — a move that ensures far more serious attention to the story from the major news orgs.
Oh, that’s fun!
And best of all, the hurricane missed New Orleans with minimal damage, but still managed to essentially cancel or derail most of the Republican convention, while lending marvelously ironic substance to this religious-right douchebag’s invocation of God’s wrath. (Turns out he got what he wanted, but he misunderestimated how much God hates assholes.)
Sometimes, things go the way they should. It’s a good thing.
Categories: Church & State, Fiasco, General, Katrina, News & Current Events, Politics, Religion |
I haven’t been following this all that closely but for crying out loud, this is stupid.
1. Bridge to nowhere - campaigned on it being a good idea. Got into office and for whatever reason, said “not gonna happen”. No one has a clear indication as to why.
2. Did you actually read about the Alaskan Independence Party? I guess being in Canada and dealing with Quebec separatists for 20 years it is easy for me to see how light-weight and frivolous the AIP is. Only fear-mongers looking to score political points would take them seriously.
3. Every mayor digs for as much as they can right across the land. That a person would change perspective once they get to the giving stage rather than the receiving stage is normal.
4. Not sure how this is a meltdown. A 17 year old is pregnant. Are you telling me that every Democrat’s child follows their parent’s guidance and ideas to a tee?
Seems a lot of personal attacks at this time. Not sure what the reason for it is. Obama has flip flopped on more issues than a bridge. Earmark? Look at the section “reaction to spouse’s success” on this site: http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/palin-obama-comparison-chart/
If I am at all representative of independent voters, this attacking will draw a lot of people to McCain. My perspective during the primarie was that while Obama seemed to be a lot of sizzle and not much steak, at least the Democrats had been out of power long enough that maybe he could change things in a real way and make significant improvements in how politics is done. I felt he deserved a chance. But based on what I am seeing from the left regarding Palin, I don’t think Obama has any chance to change anything. It seems to me an elitist attitude permeates the Democratic camp that is so entrenched that he is being presented as a fake front. The vile contempt she is being treated with is a really sad reflection on a group of people who say they are the tolerant party.
BU,
Given that you’re strongly conservative and from another country, I’m pretty sure you’re not representative of independent voters.
As for (1), the problem isn’t that she “flip-flopped” on the Bridge to Nowhere. It’s that she ever even briefly supported that travesty.
For (2), sure it sounds like they’re not more insane than your average not-Libertarian-Party-libertarian, but that is pretty much a sufficient reason to not elect somebody to federal office. (The whole “we think the federal government is illegitimate” is rather a conflict of interest with the job.)
For (3), business-as-usual is not really bad PR … unless you’ve campaigned against business as usual.
I’ll agree with your (4) inasmuch as the younger Palin’s pregnancy won’t be a meltdown for support from right-wing religious fanatics. They’ve shown nothing if not a willingness to ignore their own claimed litmus tests of morality (hm, the daughter’s violated their scheme for sexual repression, and McCain’s lackeys have been shown to be lying) if they can get political pandering in exchange for the transgressions. On the other hand, at least some of the electorate still recognizes abject hypocracy and even a few will notice the chickens come home to roost in the coop of abstinence-only sex ed.
I’m not sure what you’re counting as “personal attacks”. Is it the news items about her bad fiscal policies? Maybe the ones about her integrity in public office? Oh! Maybe it’s the ones where we point out that her plan to silence sex educators has messed up her own family? Damn us “tolerant” people for not accepting lies, folly, repression and greed!
Again, I’m not religious so I am probably missing something, but how did this violate the whole scheme of sexual repression?
She was of legal age, at least unless she was bumping uglies for quite a while to get the pregnancy going. Due to the way Alaska’s age of consent laws work, it’d take at least a couple years, since the fuckbuddy was not significantly older.
We’ve got no evidence that she was using any of the contraceptives that the nutty Catholics find morally improper (which I personally don’t understand), or that she got pregnant as the result of biased and improper directions regarding the use of contraceptives (given my experience with the school system, my primary concern with ‘comprehensive sex ed’). The most logical assumption is she was told not to have sex, and had sex, which seems to be the only place new Catholics come from.
She’s getting married to the man. Shotgun weddings don’t match the whole Western Liberal mindset of what is good and right in the world, but not particularly consider immoral from the whole Christian sexual repressionist viewpoint.
I mean, Palin’s first kid started before she was married as well. The nutty Catholics don’t like that sorta thing, but it’s still supposed to be a fairly minor sin. I don’t see the second ’strike’ here — especially when it was her daughter’s actions and choices — being more deadly than the first.
Also, at least from the AIP’s web site, they don’t seem to have succession as a goal. They do want a vote on succession over some screwed up issues left over from how Alaska went into the union, but it doesn’t look like they can even get a majority of the AIP membership to vote for it. They mostly look like a reduced federal government group outside of that.
Dan > Based on what I have seen classified as strongly conservative in the US, I don’t know if anyone in Canada would qualify as strongly conservative down there.
I would tend to say the idea of sexual repression on the right is about as valid as the idea of sexual free-for-all on the left. Both camps have their aggressors but neither is all that mainstream.
BU,
I think both you and Gatt have confused repression and opression. It is repression to think that young adults shouldn’t have sex except in marriage, and that is out of the mainstream, both in the US and Canada.
Big U:
I think you’re missing the gravity of the “Bridge to Nowhere” flip. If reports are true, she only started opposing the bridge after federal funding for it was cut. This means two things: First, she was okay with it when the rest of America was going to have to pay for it. Second, and more importantly, when she said “I told Congress ‘thanks, but no thanks’ on that bridge to nowhere,” she was lying (or, if you want to be extremely generous, using highly disingenuous hyperbole).
Interesting tgirsch. I would agree that it would be a lie. Stupid move on her part.
Dan M. - It is not repression. It is a moral stance. I personally believe sex outside of marriage is inappropriate for anyone, myself included. I have the right to advise people of that position although I do not have the right to force that on anyone.
I find it interesting how people can tell me that everyone who isn’t married (including my own children) should have 100% approval to have as much sex as they want. I guess it is okay for some people to push their ideas on me and my children but it is not okay for me as a parent to do so. To me, that is a corruption of society and a double standard of the highest level.
The fact is, the only safe sex is no sex. Period. But here in Canada, schools are not even allowed to say that. Any group that teaches that the only 100% way to avoid STD’s and pregancies is by not have sex is banned from Canadian public schools. That I find pretty sad in a society that says we must tolerate everything anyone says.
Well, the repression thing is a matter of opinion, and probably varies depending on how you define oppression. However, while not having sex before marriage itself is a pretty unreasonable and unlikely set of odds, thinking it seems to be pretty well-supported by the American populace. Only 54% of women and 68% of men condone sex before marriage, far from enough to drive the conversation from the mainstream. Whether you consider it another sign that America’s favorite past-time is hypocrisy or learning from previous mistakes is up to you, of course.
Oh, and you all missed a 20-year-old DUI, if you really want to dig up dirt.
That’s a really unfair false dilemma. While there are some people who are that far into the whole free love stuff, the vast majority are more interested in more limited versions of the matter. In addition, the goal isn’t to advocate wanton sex, but to minimize the odds of what sex does occur resulting in unwanted pregnancy or STD transmission; there’s no inherent requirement to condone sex at all. Most lesson plans I’ve seen try to neither condone nor demonize the matter… although teachers and students themselves may editorialize.
Big U:
Others have explained the “Bridge” hypocrisy.
The issue with the AIP is not that anyone takes them seriously. It’s that the Vice-Presidential nominee of the currently-ruling party was, at least at the beginning of her political career, a member of a secessionist party that denies the legitimacy of the government itself - the government she now wants to run. Not only is that a shocking position for any would-be leader to take, but, in America, it carries some serious historical baggage; secession is associated with the most destructive, and most morally unconscionable, episode in America’s history, and is today supported largely (though mostly outside Alaska) by racist neo-Confederates and Christian Dominionists.
The issue with her actions as mayor is, again, the hypocrisy of her behavior in office and the obvious gap between that behavior and her supposed political principles and the party platform she is running on.
The issue with the teenager’s pregnancy is also the hypocrisy and double standards of the religious right, as well as the way it underscores the insanity of Palin’s anti-sex policies, which she wants to impose by law on other families who don’t have the entire Republican party coming out of the woodwork to make sure everything is all right for them. (And note that this is not a comment about the teenager herself, whom everybody wishes well. It is a comment about Sarah Palin and her odious political allies.)
I take it you agree that the facts that McCain’s campaign so blatantly screwed the pooch on this one, and that their VP pick, among many other drawbacks, is going to be the star figure in what promises to be a very embarrassing ethics investigation report just one month before the election, are kind of inconvenient for their side.
But to return to sex policy: nobody is “imposing” on you or your family by saying that people should be allowed to make up their own minds about their own private behavior. Palin and the sex-negative religious right are imposing on others by using the power of the state to pressure people to make only the decisions the wingnuts personally approve of, and to make some possible choices unavailable or criminal.
And your proposed sex-ed policy is ludicrous. The only safe anything is no (whatever) - but that’s not an argument against anything at all. Everything carries risks. Responsible sex education talks about those - the whole point to sex ed is to help people make informed decisions. But “the only safe sex is no sex” is not a responsible message, any more than “the only safe driving is no driving” is a responsible way to teach driver’s ed, or “the only safe chemistry is no chemistry” is a responsible way to teach science. Not only is that message false (it leaves out the costs of not doing whatever it is you’re going to avoid), and immensely stupid (virtually everybody has sex at some point, and we expect them to, so telling people not to is simply not a reasonable option for giving them what they need to know), but it avoids the actual knowledge that an informed person should have in that subject.
It is staggering to me that the right-wing approach to education consists entirely of an ever-increasing list of things people are not allowed to learn: facts about sex; facts about homosexuality; evolution theory; non-Christian religions; foreign languages; a huge list of library books; and on and on. Education, to them, means prohibiting knowledge! It is a parody of education, but, like so many of the stupidities and failures of the right wing, it is never required to meet any test of rationality or practicality. And the GOP’s VP-nominee is on board with most of it: she is anti-sex-ed, anti-choice, at least nominally anti-birth-control, creationist, and God knows what other kinds of stupid.The more ridicule she gets, the safer this country will be.
You missed anti-history, KTK. Note the whole pledge-of-allegience-with-explicit-endorcement-of-religion-good-enough-for-the-founding-fathers thing. (Incidentally, they weren’t even called the founding fathers until the 1860s.)
KTK - Re the sex issue. Take a real close look at what I said. Nowhere did I say anything about removing sex education. I have absolutely no problem with sex education and am in fact thankful that kids are being at least somewhat prepared to deal with sex issues. My children and I have pretty honest and frank discussions about the topic but I realize that many parents do not do that.
What I have a problem with is the attitude of “well they are going to have sex anyways so why even tell them that the only safe sex is no sex?” attitude. My daughter is 17. She told me that in her sex-ed class she was informed that as long as a condom is used, sex is safe. Period. I asked her if they discussed failure rates, etc. and she said no. I got hold of the curriculum and indeed there is no indication that no contraceptive is fail-proof. Also, there is no indication that condoms do not always protect against STD’s.
Now, while she states she has not had sex, she said she gets mocked for her decision because “even her sex ed teacher said all teenagers are going to have sex”. When I went to discuss this, I was advised (by the teacher) that it is a fact that all teenagers are active and I should just get used to it.
And from discussions with other parents in different schools, they have received the same message. So, when I cite frustration it is based on personal experience.
As far as Palin goes, citing a person’s change in their perspective or stance (i.e. mayor wants money, fed says no money), that is a dangerous game to play given the number of position reversals that Obama has made while being a Senator. To cite Palin’s and ignore Obama’s is hypocrysy as well.
Big U:
I agree with others that you seem to be confusing the meaning of repress with oppress.
What I have a problem with is the attitude of “well they are going to have sex anyways so why even tell them that the only safe sex is no sex?” attitude.
I’m not aware of anyone who advocates this. That looks to me like a straw man position. What I and others argue is that many of them are going to have sex anyway, and therefore we shouldn’t tell them that “the only safe sex is no sex” to the exclusion of other, more comprehensive forms of sex eduction. This is what the “abstinence-only” crowd — which I believe includes Palin — argues we should do, and what we argue against.
I got hold of the curriculum and indeed there is no indication that no contraceptive is fail-proof.
Your stories, if true, would be an indication of a bad program, and a uniquely bad teacher, rather than an indictment of sex education in general.
that is a dangerous game to play given the number of position reversals that Obama has made while being a Senator.
Do you honestly think that if Obama and his supporters keep mum about Palin’s flip-flops, the McCain campaign will return the favor? You can’t possibly be that naive. The Obama stuff is going to come up anyway if there’s any substance to it at all, and even if there isn’t (cf., SBVT).
Of course they won’t keep quiet. But if the Democrats are going to push the idea that changing one’s position on an issue makes them unfit to lead, then what are they saying about Obama? I really don’t get the rush to hypocrysy.
Now pay really close attention and I would almost guarantee that the whole flip-flopping issue will disappear from the Republican attacks on Obama. They know they can’t use it so they won’t. I would hope the Democrats are smart enough to do the same thing.
And in all reality, I am much more simpathetic to someone flipping on a position after moving from municipal or state governnance to federal governance than I am with someone flipping positions while being in federal politics the whole time.
You’re not so old that that sorta stuff should be surprising. I’ve visited several schools in Massachusetts, two in Florida, three in Virginia, one in New Hampshire, and a couple in the midwest, and the closest you could get to admitting unreliability in condoms was the assessment (Bedford Senior High School) was “99.99% effectiveness with spermicide”. That was, admittedly, a year before the link between spermicides and increased STD transmission was really well-known (assuming use of a condom), so in all fairness I can’t blame them for that particular side of the mistake.
Citing the one-year typical use numbers in another thread had Ted — a fairly well-educated individual who’s smarter than I am, if his writing is any indication — thinking I was making stuff up.
If I could honestly expect teachers to give real values on the matter and for those numbers to sink in, I’d be heavily pro-comprehensive sex ed myself. The reality is that teachers and students are human, and humans with rather hefty personal biases on the matter. We’re talking a group of people that can and regularly do confuse the observer effect and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (eight of the schools whose lesson plans I’ve looked through) or think that long carbon chains with a bunch of azides are a huggy great idea (almost universally either explosive or poisonous, four lesson plans thinking they would make wonderful medicines). Accuracy is good and all, but it doesn’t seem to be on top of the union menu.
BU,
Why are you still going on about Palin chaning her mind about the Great Bridge of Pork.
It never has been about a change of stated opinion. It’s about the badness of the goal. That is, it’s bad to want to spend half a billion dollars on cronyism. And it’s even worse to have her change in stated policy demonstrate that the real goal had always been to bilk the federal gov’t for half of that massive wad of graft.
No flip-flopping is involved; only revelations of a worse offense.
Am I the only one crazy enough to think that “comprehensive” sex ed is meant in opposition to not only abstinence-only, but also crappy curricula that don’t mention condom failure rates?
If we take as stipulated the figures that actual condom use has a 2% failure rate and that “typical use” (i.e., not actually using them all the time) has a failure rate of 23% (These are the numbers from Gatt’s other post.) and that no contraceptive yields a 85% pregnancy rate (from here), then that suggests that “typical use” means using the condoms only 75% of the time. (0.02*0.75+0.85*(1-0.75)=0.2275).
A 75% usage rate makes for a pretty damned poor demonstration of efficacy. Citing “typical use” numbers as a description of the actual contraceptive tool is terribly misleading.
This was a weak post. And, you call that a melt down! Please. The fact that you radicals on the left are afraid of her has you libs looking for any and all lies and half - truths about her to then pass it off as truth. Doesn’t work on me. Sarah Palin is a excellent choice for McCain. She is tough as nails and she is Conservative. God I love it. Balding Biden better worry about his exstensive screw ups throughout his 35 years in the Senate when they debate in Oct. She will show herself to be a reformer, a non-Washington insider and Balding Biden will open his big mouth and show the world what’s wrong with himself and his party.
You’re taking a very big assumption here : that the entire difference from “perfect use” to “typical use” numbers in the middle are due to no use of condoms at the time of pregnancy. That’s not the metric.
“Perfect use” is not merely use every time. Despite what it seems, proper condom use is surprisingly complicated. Using a condom that was improperly stored, old, or from a package that was opened roughly is a problem. Opening a condom pack with your teeth, keeping a condom in your wallet, or not checking the expiration date are bad ideas, but they’re not exactly the same as not using a condom. Condom breakage is usually due to improper use — either an improperly sized condom, an expired condom, putting it on wrong (such as before the user had a full erection, or with a large air bubble at the tip), or using improper or not using lubricant. Most people would not call every condom breakage similar to non-use. Hell, planned parenthood is talking about making sure that each individual condom holds air, and I’m pretty sure more heterosexual men do not do that regularly. The 2% number also typically includes pulling out before ejaculation, while the 3-4% perfect use numbers usually assume pulling out immediately afterward, and the user must be certain to grab at the base of the condom and pull out from there. The guy that keeps bucking all the way through the act is still using a condom, just not using it right.
No, unfortunately not. You’re also not the only one crazy enough to miss what my point is; I’m not merely interested in lesson plans (although a poor lesson plan is never a good start), but what we can reasonably expect people to learn. The default assumption here needs to be that someone is going to fuck up.
Again, we’re talking a school system that often could not find its own arse with an atlas, and both students and teachers with known and heavy cognitive biases related to the matter in the first place.
The point of the abstinence-only education is that it’s hard to fuck up. The entire lesson plan fits on a single post-it note, and the worst case is you end up with people who don’t follow the lesson plan (x1) and those who don’t quite learn it properly (y1), and the worst reasonable case for y1 is thinking oral sex isn’t really sex — and oral-only’s about as good for preventing transmission of HIVs and better for reducing the risk of pregnancy, even if it is a little unfilling.
Even a perfect comprehensive sexual education lesson plan is going to have people who don’t follow the lesson plan (x2) and those who don’t quite learn it properly (y2). If you don’t have a sex-negative lesson plan, there’s even going to be those who follow the lesson and still end up unprepared for an actual pregnancy (z2). You (I really hope) should get a much value of x2 than x1, but you’re almost certainly going to get more individuals in the y2 state and with incorrect beliefs that are more harmful (the previously mentioned “condoms are magic protection” though, for example). Sex-positive lesson plans, in addition to the moral and ethical issues, also have the z2 state to be concerned about.
The second series of numbers are rather dependent on the quality of sex education, but not solely based on that quality, nor do we have an overwhelming level of control of the quality of sex education. It’s a complicated policy decision.
Isn’t it illuminating to learn that Log Cabin Republicans are supporting John McCain after failing to support George W. Bush. It must be the 10% that McCain did not vote with Bush. (They must appreciate change, as in2 fives for a ten!) Have they asked McCain about his views on Gay people in the military or is it irrelevant since McCain is still fighting the Vietnam War that ended in 1975. McCain, it seems, supports all wars whether they are illegal or entered into under false pretenses, because he is a good soldier. That good soldier thinks it honors dead soldiers by adding their contempories to the list of causalties because his country is always right about war, or at least its President must be. It is a subtle difference. It is also refreshing to know that this time, the Republicans and their right wing moralists are not bleating about a 17 year old unwed mother. I am sure it is merely concidental that she is the product of a Republican god-fearing family and not some Democratic daughter from the inner city. Now there’s luck!
I think I will continue wearing my Tee shirt that says: “John McCain is Not My Drug Of Choice.”
(google the phrase if you like its message)
So, Gatt,
Why do “sex positive” sex ed programs get demoted according to their failure to stick, but you then compare them to abstinence ed as if that always works? (Despite the numbers.)
Both groups are demoted for their “failure to stick” — that’s the above stated x1 and x2 variables, and it’s pretty fair to assume that sex-positive sexual education is going to fewer people ignore the underlying tenants. I think it’s also fair to assume that there’s more potential for “mistake of fact” (the y1 and y2) in ‘comprehensive’ sexual education, since it requires more than six words. Sex-positive sexual education programs do get their own variable in “followed but got pregnant anyway” (z2), but that’s because neither abstinence (don’t have sex til N) or sex-negative comprehensive sexual education (don’t have sex til N, and here’s how to use a layered contraceptive solution) have “had sex” as an acceptable subcategory of “followed the lesson plan”.
At least as long as “had sex” is a necessary step one on the path toward pregnancy, z1 and z2 for sex-negative education is pretty much nil.
I don’t have the time or bandwidth to look over those numbers right now, but I will try to do so later. I’m also bound by the VRWC to point out a different source with different numbers.
Gatt:
I don’t think your different source means what you think it means. It underscores the point that abstinence-only education is ineffective. The only possible point you might have in pointing out that study is to point out that “other” types of sex education or no more effective, but without knowing what sort of sex education the control group was exposed to, we can’t make that sort of judgment.
There is no melt down with the selection of Sarah Palin. All of the silliness you listed above is just tabloid material. For starters, she was in fact the governor to put an end to the brige to no where project. She has no links (herself) to the AIP. So, get your facts straight! On Earmarks, why would you Dems talk about Earmarks when Barack Hussein Obama, too, benefited from the Earmarks system. I would say that is “HYPOCRISY”! Finally, the issue about the daughter being pregnant. I wish that she would have waited to get pregnanttill she was older, but sometimes kids don’t always listen, do they? The daughter and her boyfriend are going to get married and not have an abortion. And, Sarah will be supportive. That’s the right thing to do. In the end, there isn’t any meltdown with the selection, libs. It is you libs that are afraid of her. She is conservative. She is a fighter. She is a reformer. And, she doesn’t take any bull. That’s exactly what this party needs - a strong conservative Republican woman. Look out Barack Obama and Balding Biden, the GOP is going to win this election.