Sarah Palin could be the worst thing to ever happen to our country
People who have access to my LiveJournal might remember that my preferences in this election went Obama, Gore, Biden, Dodd, and then McCain. Yes, I wanted to see McCain in the White House more than Hilary, and so did the groundskeepers at the White House. As you can assume I was quite happy with an Obama-Biden ticket, promising to empower Al Gore to do what he wants to do. But now, with McCain's selection of Palin as a running mate, I can no longer abide the thought of a McCain administration.
First of all, McCain is old. My maternal grandparents had both spent a year in the ground at his age. He's had four bouts with melanoma. My grandmother died during her third bout with breast cancer. This doesn't mean he wouldn't be a good president. It just means his chances of surviving a four-year term aren't great. In the long search for a running mate, I believed that McCain was smart enough to consider the fact that he has to die sometime, and it could be while he has that job he wants so badly. In which case, he would have surely picked someone whose fitness and ability to do that job would never be in doubt. Two weeks ago he proved me wrong.
Sarah Palin has little to no experience in everything that matters. Rudi Giuliani was far more qualified than she is. Giuliani was the mayor of NY, while she was governor of one of the most unpopulated states in the country. She has spent her time in office firing people who don't agree with her, and I believe time will show, those who don't do what she wants them to do. Her environmental policy has been "Don't protect the endangered wildlife because that makes it hard to drill for oil," "We're shooting wolves from helicopters all over Alaska so that local hunters have more to hunt," and "We're killing wolf cubs because they can't survive without their parents (that we also killed)."
Palin opposes state-funded sex education and supports abstinence-only education. I think her daughter's situation is proof enough of how well that works, not to mention the STD rate in Alaska is high enough to call it an epidemic. There is nothing wrong with teaching abstinence, but there is NOTHING more important when we live in a world of HIV than teaching how do protect yourself against STDs. I was fortunate enough to have state-funded sex education, and I am very grateful of that, as is my fiance. We don't want kids for a decade, if that, and fortunately we are both armed with a wealth of knowledge on the subject.
Palin likes to call herself a fighter of corruption. She doesn't like to talk about how she spent almost $50,000 of the State's money in the past 20 months on her family, money that is set aside for official state business trips by the governor. She took from this fund 300 times. Then there are her firings of people who didn't agree with her all of the time, not to mention repeated queries to the librarian in her town about banning books. I'm sorry but how is that not fascist? Her abuse of power is just as bad as Bush's. And she hasn't been around nearly as long.
Then there is Palin's stance on one of the most basic rights a woman can have: the right to an abortion. Legalized abortion might have been more important than women's suffrage. The abortion debate is one of the most heated debates going on anywhere in the world, but abortions will happen whether you want them to or not, and while that is the case, we must protect those who have them from exposing themselves to extreme risk. Studies have proven that the rate of abortions is the same globally in legal and illegal countries. The leading cause of death for women old enough to become pregnant in Canada used to be botched abortions. Globally, 13% of women are still dying from abortions. This same study also proved that abortion happens less where contraception is more widely available. You want to reduce abortion rates? Teach people how to use condoms instead of telling them not to have sex. I guarantee you'll feel much better about yourself. Abortions aren't easy no matter the situation. It's always easier to prevent something than to have to deal with it.
While we're on the subject of rights, there comes to mind gay rights. The Log Cabin Republicans, THE group of gay Republicans, petitioned the RNC this year to reverse the party's official platform on equal marriage, saying that half the party supports either marriage rights or civil unions. Alas their pleas fell upon deaf ears. Palin has yet to publicly say anything on the issue, however her church, of which she is a proud member, is very proud of its "Pray Away the Gay" philosophy of "rehabilitating" homosexuals through prayer and other means. I haven't set foot in my church since they had a crisis meeting on Massachusetts legalizing equal marriage, and I can't begin to describe my rage when I read about that phrase. 10% of organisms that have gender are attracted to their own gender. What happened to "God made everything and it was Good"? Do all these bibles have footnotes that say "Except the gays"?
I never thought I'd find the exact embodiment of everything that I feel is wrong with this country in one person. She is the enemy of the environment, of responsible government, of debate, of fundamental rights of choice and knowledge, holding no tolerance for different ideas or thinking. Hockey mom? She's Domi, out on the ice beating anyone in her way to a pulp, and it's time to call the penalties.
First of all, McCain is old. My maternal grandparents had both spent a year in the ground at his age. He's had four bouts with melanoma. My grandmother died during her third bout with breast cancer. This doesn't mean he wouldn't be a good president. It just means his chances of surviving a four-year term aren't great. In the long search for a running mate, I believed that McCain was smart enough to consider the fact that he has to die sometime, and it could be while he has that job he wants so badly. In which case, he would have surely picked someone whose fitness and ability to do that job would never be in doubt. Two weeks ago he proved me wrong.
Sarah Palin has little to no experience in everything that matters. Rudi Giuliani was far more qualified than she is. Giuliani was the mayor of NY, while she was governor of one of the most unpopulated states in the country. She has spent her time in office firing people who don't agree with her, and I believe time will show, those who don't do what she wants them to do. Her environmental policy has been "Don't protect the endangered wildlife because that makes it hard to drill for oil," "We're shooting wolves from helicopters all over Alaska so that local hunters have more to hunt," and "We're killing wolf cubs because they can't survive without their parents (that we also killed)."
Palin opposes state-funded sex education and supports abstinence-only education. I think her daughter's situation is proof enough of how well that works, not to mention the STD rate in Alaska is high enough to call it an epidemic. There is nothing wrong with teaching abstinence, but there is NOTHING more important when we live in a world of HIV than teaching how do protect yourself against STDs. I was fortunate enough to have state-funded sex education, and I am very grateful of that, as is my fiance. We don't want kids for a decade, if that, and fortunately we are both armed with a wealth of knowledge on the subject.
Palin likes to call herself a fighter of corruption. She doesn't like to talk about how she spent almost $50,000 of the State's money in the past 20 months on her family, money that is set aside for official state business trips by the governor. She took from this fund 300 times. Then there are her firings of people who didn't agree with her all of the time, not to mention repeated queries to the librarian in her town about banning books. I'm sorry but how is that not fascist? Her abuse of power is just as bad as Bush's. And she hasn't been around nearly as long.
Then there is Palin's stance on one of the most basic rights a woman can have: the right to an abortion. Legalized abortion might have been more important than women's suffrage. The abortion debate is one of the most heated debates going on anywhere in the world, but abortions will happen whether you want them to or not, and while that is the case, we must protect those who have them from exposing themselves to extreme risk. Studies have proven that the rate of abortions is the same globally in legal and illegal countries. The leading cause of death for women old enough to become pregnant in Canada used to be botched abortions. Globally, 13% of women are still dying from abortions. This same study also proved that abortion happens less where contraception is more widely available. You want to reduce abortion rates? Teach people how to use condoms instead of telling them not to have sex. I guarantee you'll feel much better about yourself. Abortions aren't easy no matter the situation. It's always easier to prevent something than to have to deal with it.
While we're on the subject of rights, there comes to mind gay rights. The Log Cabin Republicans, THE group of gay Republicans, petitioned the RNC this year to reverse the party's official platform on equal marriage, saying that half the party supports either marriage rights or civil unions. Alas their pleas fell upon deaf ears. Palin has yet to publicly say anything on the issue, however her church, of which she is a proud member, is very proud of its "Pray Away the Gay" philosophy of "rehabilitating" homosexuals through prayer and other means. I haven't set foot in my church since they had a crisis meeting on Massachusetts legalizing equal marriage, and I can't begin to describe my rage when I read about that phrase. 10% of organisms that have gender are attracted to their own gender. What happened to "God made everything and it was Good"? Do all these bibles have footnotes that say "Except the gays"?
I never thought I'd find the exact embodiment of everything that I feel is wrong with this country in one person. She is the enemy of the environment, of responsible government, of debate, of fundamental rights of choice and knowledge, holding no tolerance for different ideas or thinking. Hockey mom? She's Domi, out on the ice beating anyone in her way to a pulp, and it's time to call the penalties.