When You Get A Room Full Of People Like Us Together To Listen To A Disingenuous Anti-Choice, Anti-Education, Creationist Who Clearly Has No Shame Otherwise She Would Have Said "Did You Call Kay Bailey First?" Give Her Big Talk? It's Ugly.
So we'll do the nice thing and share only this safe item from tonight's gathering.
The question eventually came up - "Why do they keep showing shots of the same three black people?" Which is just what they did last time around. (This time out it's two men and one woman they keep showing in the shots.)
The particular brand of social conservatism in which Sarah Palin quite evidently believes deeply would deny other American families and other American women the freedom to make these same intimate decisions according to the dictates of their own consciences, religious convictions and traditions.
We have the internet(s)! The answer awaits keystrokes away!
Summary from FactCheck.org: There are 36 black delegates to the 2008 Republican National Convention, the lowest total in 40 years. The black delegates make up 1.5 percent of the total delegates, compared with a record-setting 6.7 percent in 2004.
The report they're talking about, which you can download and read for free.
"Record-setting." Heh.
What else? Their set sucks. As overly-done and glitzy as the DNC set was? It looked FABULOUS on television. Whoever designed this set did not think beyond that room, and they certainly didn't think about it would look like in the tight podium shots. On the other hand, the black void Palin appears to be standing in front of is quite appropriate.
For the record, I'm in disagreement with part of my chosen candidate's stance that The Pregnant 17-year-old Is Not In Play. When the Mom's public policies are that bad (abstinence-only education, no condoms or other contraceptives available to youth because THAT WORKS, DAMMIT), her failure to effectively enforce those draconian policies on her own household puts the kid in play for the sole reason that - as she said during tonight's speech - she will be an advocate for such policies in the White House. (Do keep in mind that Palin thinks that the "under God" part of the pledge of allegiance was put there by the Founders in the 1700s, as opposed to being signed into law by Eisenhower after being introduced as a joint resolution of Congress during the McCarthy era OVER ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY YEARS LATER.)
Living a life guided by the rules of a faith is one thing. Faith wielded to the detriment of public policy, imposing those rules on those not part of that faith, is entirely another. Our nation's Founders saw directly the negative effects of when there's no wall between a god and the state. That's why they tried to avoid the whole mingling of the two.
Here's a random example of why this type of mindset matters. In Ventura County there is a program that gives women drug offenders a choice between going to jail or going into a Christian-based diversion program. Right now it's funded by private donations, but the current administration has demonstrated much love for shifting resources into Christian faith-based programs, and attempts to block that sort of thing have only met with partial success. Imagine the outrage if this faith-based diversion program was based on Muslim precepts? Or how about Scientology? Or any of the Wiccan belief systems? This program in Ventura County is primarily used by very poor women who have no resources to pay their lawyers to pursue another outcome. Basically it comes down to the "choice" for these women is jail or come to Jesus. It's coercion, it's tagging one faith tradition as legitimate over all others, and it's wrong.
Anywho, with Palin this whole thing is especially an issue due to her pimping out the preggers kid, and select of her other children, in a flagrant act of pandering to the extreme religious right. Every time I listen to the way she & McCain's camp frames the child with Down's Syndrome, I am almost-but-not-quite astonished, and my heart goes out to parents who made a different choice, for whatever personal reasons. Of course to her mind those so-called parents don't matter as they will probably burn in hell.
This guy says it better:
As for the 17-year-old pregnant daughter's options, I wonder how much "choice" was available, in a practical sense, coming from that household. Just watch how the campaign is already framing the narrative for that girl and her baby's daddy (a.k.a. her teenage hockey star fiance). There is no "privacy" for those two, and her mother, working in concert with the campaign machine, decided this would be so. *If* the campaign's claims of We Knew About It Because We Vetted Her No Really Swear To God We Did are true? That means those two teens were caged from the start. They make for a Tidy Message Point that appeals to the extremist right wing of the party that fundamentally distrusts McCain, people who must be nudged to get out and vote for a guy some of them don't actually want to vote for. They might do so with one of their own by his side. (Yes, I'm going with the folks who believe Palin's selection has little to do with an attempt to reach Hillary supporters, and more to do with shoring up the Evangelical base. Too much of what Palin stands for? Huge chunk of Hillary's supporters do not.)
But I think it's fine that my candidate, who thinks the pregnant 17-year-old shouldn't be put into play despite the evidence that the policies her mother is ready to inflict upon the nation are appalling and to the detriment of the whole, is a better person than I am. Over these 17 months he's gracefully and powerfully put up with shit from both sides that would have had me up a tower with a deer rifle a loooong time ago.
Okay I have to stop typing now because certain people think they should have input in what I'm typing, to which I keep saying GET YOUR OWN FUCKING BLOG, OKAY? Also they ate all of the pepperoni and I have to go slice up some more.
(For the record, we gathered tonight because tomorrow is expected to be the same-old. We're on our own tomorrow. I'll be sitting on the couch for McCain's speech, resisting the urge to fling the cat at the television.)
The female members of the room did note the hotness of the First Dude, causing an immediate uproar among the rest. We were just making an observation. Men just don't understand these things.
