Saturday, August 30, 2008
Obama's Speech
Since I've been falling into the trap of knocking this out of the headlines a bit too much... if you have not seen Barack's acceptance speech yet (or only saw it once), you can watch it here, and/or read it here. That second link also has other Barack speeches going back to 2002. If you're somehow still on the fence, I recommend reading through those.
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4 comments:
Hey Jon,
Welcome back to the blogosphere. I still had this link on my favorites list... what does that say about me?
I listened to Obama's acceptance speech and I read his response to the 14 questions from the Science Debate 2008 group. He sounds pretty good... if he just weren't a darn liberal Democrat with religious overtones. ;-)
I noted over at CoCT that I'm stuck for a choice this year. I'm generally conservative but not religious, right-wing-nutter, war-mongering conservative. I kind of liked McCain except for his stance on the Iraq war. Then he started pandering to the fundagelicals and I became a little more leery. Now his choice of Palin has sealed the deal. No effing way will he get my vote. I hear that her church is part of the Dominionist movement. Just what we need; a religious civil war with me as the main enemy. I don't care if her 17 y/o daughter is preggers. I've got two daughters who just passed that age not too long ago and I thank FSM that they didn't end up in the same boat but it's not like you can really do a whole lot about it. Kids will be kids. And I don't care if Palin chose to have a Down Syndrome baby rather than have an abortion. Her choice. Aye, but there's the rub! She and her religious cronies want to take the opportunity for 'choice' away from everyone. Bah.
On the other side, I still see Democrats as the grasshoppers from the old 'Grasshopper and the Ants' parable. Or maybe as the friends of the Little Red Hen in that parable. Maybe that's wrong but it's the impression I have gotten over 45 years of watching politics. For a while there I thought maybe I was Libertarian but I'm becoming less sure about that especially if Bob Barr is an actual representative of that philosophy. I still think I'm 80% libertarian but I'm not in tune with the Party line.
I don't think it's right to totally dismiss the daughter thing as either "families are off limits" or "kids will be kids." Palin advocates abstinence-only education, and it doesn't work in her own house. I don't advocate referring to the daughter more specifically than "Palin's daughter," but it seems like a more-than-fair topic to me.
ANYHOO, you know where I stand on the political issues. I thought I might be a libertarian, too, at one point, but it turns out there are a lot of things I think the government should be involved in, so I guess not :)
"Palin advocates abstinence-only education, and it doesn't work in her own house." - Jon
Yes, I agree that's an argument to try to use against her. My caveat is that we taught our daughters about contraception and approved their attendance in sex ed classes, etc. but I still had to cross my fingers that they wouldn't get pregnant. (And you know how well crossing your fingers works). Of course since fathers don't ask their daughters about things like that, I don't know if they were careful or abstinent or lucky. At some point, more around 19, the older one went on the pill. I'm fairly certain my wife knows a lot more of the details. Anyway, with the Palin thing, the statistics are more damning of abstinence-only than is one case from Palin's family. And we don't really know that (a) Sarah Palin didn't teach her daughter about contraception or (b) whether her daughter ignored it for other reasons. A bunch of bloggers were speculating on reasons a girl might get pregnant besides 'accident': Trapping the boyfriend into marriage, forcing her parents to let her marry her boyfriend, being jealous of her mother who was just pregnant, not getting enough love at home and wanting a baby to love, and I suppose the psychologists could come up with some others. (or maybe the condom broke, I've known it to happen.)
So anyway, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. George will probably nuke the Russians over the Georgia thing, there are three hurricanes lined up to smack Florida, and now I have to worry about Joel's Army. I think I need to go discuss world affairs with my friends Jack and Jim. :-)
Thanks! You're the first person to give me a good explanation of why not to bring it up. Of course, as fallacious as the argument is, you know the "in her own house" approach would do more with many people than pulling out the stats...
Anyhoo, I'll officially drop that thread :)
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