Goodbye, Paul Newman

Yesterday a Hollywood legend passed on. I kept thinking it was too bad that younger people probably don't know his films -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Verdict, Cool Hand Luke, The Sting, and on and on. They should go rent them sometime. But Paul Newman was much more than just an actor, he was one of the really good guys. And ain't that hard to find in Hollywood in these days of overblown egos and diva behavior?

Married to Joanne Woodward since 1958, they had a rare long-term celebrity marriage, with nary of hint of infidelity. He once famously said, when asked if he was tempted to cheat on his wife, that "I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?" He was a philanthropist who donated all the profits from his Newman's Own food products to charity, creating a camp for seriously ill children. And by all accounts, he was a genuinely wonderful father and friend.

Paul, we will miss you.

Main Street needs to understand this

All I hear on the news is that the bailout plan is being called a bailout of Wall Street bankers and that people are really mad about it. It is absolutely true that some banks and mortgage lenders came up with exotic mortgages that some people didn't understand and/or shouldn't have taken out. These 100% loans (or even higher), no down payment, balloon payment, etc. type of instruments should never have been allowed by the regulators to exist. It is also true that the Republicans, in order to kowtow to big business as they always have, have been deregulating like crazy in order to "let the market work."

But who took these loans out? And who wrung every dollar of equity out of their homes in the last few years? Who bought houses that were too expensive, that they couldn't afford, putting nothing down and using these kinds of loans, causing this mess to happen in the first place?

Main Street needs to fess up that this is just as much a bailout of them as it is of Wall Street. For those of who bought affordable homes and got traditional mortgages, we will be taking the blow with them even though we did everything right. I think the knee-jerk reaction that it's only Wall Street that's to blame (and yes, they deserve plenty), are missing half the problem. Let's just hope they're not doomed to repeat their mistakes because they never understood that.

First presidential debate

Well, it looks like McCain decided he had gotten the bailout talks in hand and he decided to go to the debate after all, thus clearing the way for his running mate Sarah Palin to have her own debate with Joe Biden next Thursday (can't wait for that one)!

You know I'm biased, but I have to say I thought McCain was unusually snarky and belittling of Obama, completely refusing to look him in the eye. But what really struck me was when he gave Obama the "I don't need on the job training" shot, which immediately made me think of his running mate Barbie. Does he think she could have come anywhere close to making the kind of points Obama made? It should be clear to everyone by now that he chose her because he thought she would help him win the election, not because she could help him govern. Obama, on the other hand, chose the best person to help him govern, or even take over in the unfortunate event something happens to him. And that says a lot about the two men to me.

But back to the debate... I think both men got in some punches, and while I would have liked to hear more specifics about some things I think it's hard to do that in a debate where there is limited time without running the danger of getting bogged down in minutiae. I also noticed that McCain falls into the Chris Matthews trap of referring to historical events and people that a lot of younger voters (who will play a big part in this election) don't know or care about. Obama tried to be magnanimous by saying a couple of times that "John is right..." when he should have said something like "while x did happen, it would have been better if we had done y", but in any case he showed more respect for McCain than McCain did for him.

Now on to next Thursday. If Palin's handlers once again allow her to say that she has foreign policy experience because you can see an island off the coast of Russia from an island off the coast of Alaska, especially when debating the foreign policy expert in the Senate, all that will be left to do is for the Obamas to start packing for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

McCain's bizarre campaign suspension

Yesterday, in his latest head scratching move, John McCain "suspended" his campaign to focus on the financial crisis. Oh, how magnanimous of him! The other 500+ Senators and Congressmen and women were sitting around twiddling their thumbs and moaning about how they just couldn't do this without him! Thank goodness he has decided to pull all his ads, dump out of the debate, and ride in on a white horse to save the day! Whew!! I just don't know what we would have done without the guy who himself has admitted he doesn't understand economics!

This is such an obvious delaying tactic it's not even funny. Although Letterman got some yucks out of it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/24/john-mccain-cancels-lette_n_128998.html

But seriously... the University of Mississippi has spent $5.5 million on setting up this debate, and they can't reschedule it. Maybe $5.5 million isn't a lot to John McCain (after all, he did say that you're middle class if you make less than $5 million), but it would be unfair to the college to cancel after they've fronted that much money. Besides, we have less than 40 days to go to the election, and he hasn't debated Obama once. I'm beginning to wonder if he's going to try to have Palin bow out of the vice presidential debate because he knows she's in no way, shape or form up to debating Biden, it would be a joke. We'll see...

But why suspend the whole campaign? I've noticed that they rarely let Palin out on the stump on her own, so I guess he had to suspend it rather than let her soldier on by herself. The polls are dipping for them, so is he thinking this is a way to shake things up, like he did when he picked Palin? Personally, I think this is going to backfire big-time for McCain. It makes him look like he's either trying to dodge debating Obama because he's not ready or that it's a political stunt. Either way, he loses.

UPDATE: Well, what a surprise! McCain is now proposing that the first presidential debate take the place of the vice presidential debate. Ha! Well, they've finally figured out what an airhead Sarah Palin is! (I refer you to the Katie Couric interview where she insists she has loads of foreign policy experience because Alaska is closest to Russia and shares a border with Canada. Wow. She cannot buy a clue, can she?) What do you want to bet they will try to run out the clock and the vice presidential debate will never happen at all? Any takers on 50 bucks?

A Big "What If??"

It's amazing how many of our current problems tie back to the environment. Can you imagine where we would be today if we had decided to get off of oil ten years ago? Fifteen years ago? What would have happened if we had taken the environmental view and developed alternative fuels a long time ago?

Climate change would have been drastically slowed, or even eliminated. Polar bears would not be endangered. Gas wouldn't be $4 a gallon. We would have a fraction of the smog we currently have, which has contributed to the explosion of childhood asthma cases and other lung diseases (thus increasing the cost of health care). We wouldn't have coal companies blowing the tops off of mountains and throwing them in our rivers. We wouldn't have to consider spending billions on more nuclear plants and dealing with their radioactive waste. We wouldn't be tied to the oil producing countries that don't like us very much. We wouldn't have to worry about gas shortages due to hurricanes in the Gulf closing pipelines. Our car manufacturers might actually be at the forefront of design and development instead of constantly playing catch-up to the Japanese and the Europeans. We would have had a boatload of new jobs in green technologies. Our economy would be thriving instead of going down the tubes.

And... maybe Bush wouldn't have invaded Iraq, thus saving us over 4,100 soldiers' lives, hundreds of thousands of lives of Iraqi citizens, and about a trillion dollars or so, enough to bail out all these mortgages.

I heard today that the leaders gathered at the UN are wondering why the United States is not taking the lead in the development of alternative fuels. Many other countries (including Saudi Arabia, by the way), are vigorously attacking this problem, knowing that the dominance of oil is coming to an end. The United States can either be on the forefront of this development, or it can lag behind and waste the opportunity of a lifetime. Just think what will happen in ten years' time if we don't.

Time for a new era of common sense

Yesterday we reached a true financial crisis in this country, brought about largely by the mortgage mess (and deregulation), exacerbated by this administration's tax cuts for the wealthy, and finished off by years of overconsumption and lack of common sense by many Americans.

For the government's part, in exchange for bailing out financial institutions who lent money to people they knew couldn't pay it back, they need to put into action some very strong regulations, and make sure they are enforced so this never happens again. It would be great if we could trust our mortgage bankers to not write loans they know are likely to fail; but when they work on a commission or bonus basis, unfortunately they have just not been doing that. That, along with mortgage plans that should never have come into being, such as 100% or even 110% mortgages, no money down, interest only, balloon payment and other exotic loans, caused this horrible mess. The bankers should never have written them, but consumers should never have taken them out in the first place. If the bank tells you you can afford a $300,000 house, don't buy a $300,000 house! Buy a $200,000 house. Trust me, the bank will allow you to send them as much money as you currently have and as much money as you will ever have in the future, given the chance.

Re the tax cuts that went largely to the wealthy - yeah, that worked well, didn't it?? What Republicans never seem to get is that "trickle down" economics doesn't work. Their philosophy is to give all the money to the wealthy and it will somehow trickle down to the little guy, i.e., the middle class. The middle class is the economic engine of this country, and it is disappearing. Without a middle class having disposable income to spend, this economy grinds to halt, as we have already seen. Unfortunately, what has been happening is that even without cash to spend, even with wages stagnating, some people will buy stuff anyway.... on credit.

So I'm not letting the consumer entirely off the hook in this mess. We have had decades of overconsumption and just a general lack of common sense. I will be the first to admit that there are times I spent more than I should and should have saved more than I did; but I also am not living paycheck to paycheck, and many people are. And where did we get the idea that we should have McMansions for all? I have sat around a table with a group of ladies who were expounding on how it's just impossible to live in a house less than 4,000 square feet these days! Cavernous kitchens with pricey granite countertops and spa-like bathrooms have become the norm. I'm sure these ladies would feel claustrophobic in my little 1,300 square foot home where the master bath is probably the size of their linen closets, and they might be surprised to find that I intend to downsize from that! Quite frankly, many Americans just have too much stuff. I've been laughed at when I tell people my biggest TV is 16 inches and cost about $120. How many people would want to watch my puny TV vs. their $4,000 HD plasma one? But I look at it this way -- if you've got $4,000 sitting around and nothing to do with it, OK, but how many people do vs. how many people bought one of those $4,000 TVs lately? Maybe it's a generational thing, but I think all of us wage slaves need to start saving more (and don't put everything in the stock market!) and come down to earth about what we should be buying. Our parents may have done it the old-fashioned way, but they still have their money while a lot of younger people in this country have taken out balloon payment mortgages and seen their credit card interest rates climb through the roof.

Which brings me to the subject of accountability. Most people of my generation and older would never NOT pay our mortgages if we were capable of doing so, even if the price of our homes (temporarily) fell below what we owed on it. Yet, this mortgage crisis has been seriously worsened by people who are willing to just walk away and let the bank hold the bag for their debt. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs, entire companies have gone under, in part because they should never have written the mortgages to begin with, but also because even people who could pay their mortgages just walked away instead. Where's the sense of personal responsibility? We need to be willing to say "NO" to ourselves sometimes, something that is becoming increasingly hard to do in such a materialistic society. It's time for all of us to take stock of just how much we need vs. how much we want.

McCain confused about where Spain is??

See the article below... I can't decide if McCain has confused Spain -- our ally in Europe -- with a troublesome Latin American country, or if he really means to diss that country. Either way, this is the man the Republicans want to be President???

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/18/mccain-meant-to-reject-sp_n_127449.html

I guess this explains why he keeps referring to Czechoslovakia, a country that ceased to exist in 1993.

This is pretty scary...

Maybe it's appropriate that Halloween is coming up. Here's Sarah Palin speaking in Alaska, with a crowd of 5,000 people chanting "drill, baby, drill!" BTW, Alaskans share oil revenues, so they are in it for the $$, and damn the environment! Either way, one of the most beautiful states in the union (and critical habitat) will be ruined if these idiots get their way:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26693683/

Watch them try to drill in ANWR if McCain/Palin get elected. Conversely, there's a boatload of oil in North Dakota we haven't tapped yet:

http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/forecast/archive/The_U.S._Poised_to_hit_New_Oil_Gusher_080317.html

Not to mention there's a huge find already being worked in Canada. Odd that they never seem to want to mention that! It's all about drilling in ANWR, or offshore (where you will interrupt shipping lanes, tourism, and commercial fishing, not to mention the possible environmental impact). Drilling in ANWR itself would be an environmental nightmare, but if you ask the Governor of Alaska she's perfectly fine with environmental destruction. But then, according to her polar bears are not in distress.

I was surprised to find that many gas stations were already running out of fuel this Saturday and if you could find gas it was outrageously expensive. The issue wasn't that there was no crude oil available -- it was the disruption in the pipelines caused by these massive storms (which are worsened by climate change, by the way). We could find all the oil in the world tomorrow, but our storage areas and our refineries are already at capacity, and the pipeline issue comes up every hurricane season. I've said all along this is NOT a supply issue, we have all the crude we can handle. This is a DEMAND issue. We've already seen in the last few months that the price of gasoline dropped only when the demand dropped, when people started buying more fuel-efficient cars and taking public transportation. If people go back to driving gas hogs the price of gasoline will go up again. If you want the price of gasoline to continue to fall, we need to continue to lessen the DEMAND.

Remember, the price of crude oil is set on a global market; we could find boatloads of it here in the U.S. and it wouldn't affect how much Americans pay for gasoline, we would just have a bigger share of the profits. Or, I should say, the American oil companies would.

The solution is not "drill, baby, drill." It is "alternative fuels, baby, alternative fuels!"

I've got an ad for Obama

Everybody's tired of nasty politics, right? So I'm going to give Obama a free idea for an ad that should tickle the funny bones and hopefully get people thinking.

First, he should open with this little ditty from one of the Republican debates where McCain makes the case that he should get the nomination because, unlike Giuliani and Romney, he hasn't been a mayor or a governor for a short period of time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A2GYNWyA4w

Then you follow with a picture of Sarah Palin and this:

"MAYOR OF WASILLA, POP. 6,700" - and
"GOVERNOR OF ALASKA FOR 21 MONTHS"

For good measure he can throw in this goodie with Karl Rove dissing Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia for being a governor only 3 years and mayor of Richmond before that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxxwz7XOLFM

Wipe to this rally where McCain crusades against pork barrel spending:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwCdVT1KQrA&feature=related

Then follow with a picture of Sarah Palin and this:

"$27 MILLION OF PORK WHILE MAYOR OF WASILLA" - and
"MORE PORK PER CAPITA THAN ANY OTHER STATE AS GOVERNOR!"

Finally, these two, where McCain refers to Czechoslovakia, a country that ceased to exist in 1993, and an Iraq/Pakistan border that also does not exist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE33mU7TjxE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb2N0S-fgdk&feature=related

Note to McCain: there's a little country called IRAN between Iraq and Pakistan as you can clearly see here:

http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/me.htm

That should be 'nuff said!

BTW, I see that Sarah Palin had Karl Rove's hand up her ass moving her mouth in that partial interview we saw. So far she's only had one short interview and already managed to piss off Russia, patronize the Israelis (and evidently give them carte blanche to do whatever the heck they want to), and suggest (once again) that she has foreign policy experience because you can see a piece of Russia from an island off of Alaska's coast. Re whether or not she is qualified to be vice president -- I REST MY CASE.

Major Palin gaffe goes unnoticed by MSM

Today, instead of talking about a major gaffe by Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the media is talking about a Karl Rove-ian smear tactic. Senator Obama clearly was talking about Bush's policies, NOT Sarah Palin, when he made a comment about "lipstick on a pig," but the McCain nutcases are trying to say he was talking about his vp pick just because she made some reference to lipstick in a joke. This is so ridiculous that it's not really worth going into - except to say that if McCain had any integrity at all he would call a press conference, apologize to Barack Obama, and fire everybody involved. Shame on him if he doesn't.

In much more important news, a couple of days ago Sarah Palin said something that should have been picked up by every media outlet and run ad nauseum, but it was not. She said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "had gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." Ahem. Apparently Ms. Palin hasn't gotten to Economics 101. As anybody who knows anything about economics knows, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were private companies until the government just recently bailed them out. She got this very important economic news exactly bass ackwards, and yet you would be hard-pressed to have heard anything about it in the news media. And she's refusing to give interviews because the press isn't deferential to her??? What the press isn't doing is their JOB. Since McCain didn't vet her, the press and the public need to, and when the vice presidential nominee, whose experience and qualifications for the job is in serious question, then this is the kind of information the press should be paying attention to -- not some ridiculous brouhaha about a common expression.

Palin refuses to face the press

The McCain campaign has refused to allow the press access to their celebrity VP pick, Sarah Palin. She must be cramming hard! Let's see, Foreign Policy 101, Economics 101, Iraq 101, Foreign Leaders' Names 101... yeah, she's got her hands full. I would have given her the weekend to be home with her kid, Track (again, the baby name book didn't have anything you liked??), since he's shipping out to Iraq -- but she's not home making him mooseburgers, she's out campaigning! So the obvious response to the question of why she is not giving interviews or going to the Sunday political talk shows is that she is not ready to answer questions. Anybody who can't face a few questions from Tom Brokaw or George Stephanopolous has absolutely no business running for vice president. She's certainly not ready to lead our military, should something happen to McCain. And absolutely not ready to take on the economic crisis that is facing this country.

By the way, Joe Biden's son, Beau, is also shipping out to Iraq.

UPDATE: ABC's Charlie Gibson has actually scored an interview! Not exactly a hard-hitting journalist... it's scheduled for the end of this week (so, her first interview in over two weeks of being the nominee, obviously they're trying to give her as few opportunities to make a gaffe as possible). Too bad Tim Russert is no longer with us. I would have loved to have seen him take her on with clips of "what exactly is it a vice president does, anyway?", etc. etc. Would have been interesting! Unfortunately I don't think Brokaw will hit her as hard as Russert would have, when and if she gets the guts to go on Meet The Press (which Biden was on this weekend, BTW). Come out, come out, wherever you are, Sarah!

McCain and Palin - reformers??

You know, John McCain and Sarah Palin have positioned themselves as "reformers" and "change agents." They said she has military experience because of the National Guard. He says he's against earmarks and special interests and for helping save the environment. That all sounds pretty good, but let's take a look at the facts, why don't we?

1. Sarah Palin claims she said "no, thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere, the $223 million earmark put in the federal budget for a bridge in Alaska to an island with few inhabitants. That's right, almost a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money - yours, mine, and everybody else's in America. Now, what Gov. Palin said would lead one to believe that the $223 million went back in the federal coffers. But this is not so... the label was simply taken off the earmark, and Alaska received $223 million federal taxpayer dollars to spend on whatever she darn well pleases. So her statement revved up the red meat eaters at the convention, but if this is not quite a lie, it is tantamount to one.
2. She pushed through and signed ethics legislation -- true. It's also true that this legislation was in the works for some time before she became governor, and was actually begun by... Democrats.
3. Does she command the National Guard in Alaska? Kind of -- she can call them out, but only in the case of a natural disaster or a security issue. But the Guard is actually under the direct command of a Major General. And if they are deployed overseas she may not get so much as an e-mail about what they're doing, much less command any troops.
4. She is an environmental nightmare. She has voted against limiting mining where runoff from the operation would endanger salmon. She doesn't want polar bears listed as an endangered species, because she doesn't want them getting in the way of drilling as much as possible in her state. She wants to open a wildlife refuge, ANWR to drilling (what about the word "refuge" do these people not understand)?? I could write a book about how stupid that would be, and how illogical, but I may save that for another time. And by the way, she also thinks human activity does not contribute to climate change.
5. She has requested more earmark money per capita than any other state in the country (and, as we now know, she received $27 million in federal money for her town of 6,700 when she was mayor). Did McCain know about this when he asked her to be his running mate? Hmmmm....
6. But she has made some small sacrifices -- when she became governor she did lay off her personal chef. He must not have known how to make mooseburgers! But her assertion that she sold the governor's private jet on eBay is only partially correct. It was listed on eBay but it did not sell there. Eventually it was sold to a political contributor of hers, but despite the fact that McCain likes to say she made a profit on it, it was sold at a loss of around $600,000. Remember, this was state property, not her personal property, so she cost the state $600,000 just so she could say she sold it.
7. Gov. Palin is currently under an ethics investigation to see whether she abused her office in trying to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired when he and her sister went through a nasty divorce. The campaign has been trying to get the results of that investigation stalled until after the election.
8. John McCain was one of five senators accused of corruption in the Keating Five scandal, during the savings and loan crisis in 1989. They were accused of interceding to get regulators to look the other way in exchange for political contributions. The Senate Ethics Committee, after an investigation, decided that three of the five committed improper acts. The other two, including McCain, got a slap on the wrist. Because the regulators did not seize the savings and loan in question in time to prevent a failure, federal taxpayers had to bail the company out to the tune of $2.6 billion.
9. The head of that savings and loan was a friend of McCain's. He gave McCain and his family numerous trips that McCain did not admit to until after the scandal broke.
10. McCain's first marriage ended when he returned from Vietnam. While he had been gone, his wife had a horrific car accident, rendering her partially disabled and causing her to gain weight. He was dating Cindy before his divorce, and he and Cindy were married five weeks after his divorce was final. So much for "in sickness and in health," huh??

The truth kind of gives you a different perspective, doesn't it?

Repubs eat the red meat

After a week of rightly questioning Sarah Palin's experience to be vice president, which is nonexistent, suddenly the Republican talking heads are over the moon with the hockey mom from Alaska. I didn't watch her speech (man, I couldn't, ugh), but I've seen clips and all of a sudden the Republicans are liking mooseburgers! Giving a speech did NOT give her any more experience than she had yesterday. Giving a speech did NOT give Obama any less experience. Giving a speech did NOT make it right that she hired a lobbyist and received $27 million in earmarks for a town of 6,700 people.

I was shocked that she went to the experience argument, quite frankly; I assumed McCain gave that up when he decided to pick someone with NO foreign policy experience whatsoever, someone who just got her passport in 2006. Carville was right when he showed a picture of her "town hall" and said it looked like a bait shop in Louisiana (great line, Carville)!

Let me remind you, Sarah Palin - Obama was a state senator and is currently a United States Senator. You have been a mayor of a small town and governor for 20 months. He has written legislation to run a state and the country; you count the PTA as experience. Listen, hockey's not big here, but soccer is, and I can't think of any soccer moms I know who are qualified to be vice president. Are you denigrating Obama's experience to try to take focus off your own lack of resume?

Welcome to the big leagues, lady. You're going to need all the help you can get going up against Joe Biden. Study hard!

GOP hijacked by Christian right

John McCain is supposed to be a maverick. He's also supposed to be a moderate. Then someone explain to me how he allowed the extreme right-wing evangelical Christian leaders in this country to hijack the party that he now leads. In picking the obviously unqualified Sarah Palin as his veep choice, he passed over many other well-qualified candidates, including Tom Ridge, Sen. Olympia Snowe, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and others, only because they were pro-choice. Why? Because the evangelical Christian leaders told him they would not accept anyone who was not a pro-life candidate as they obviously have their eye on overturning Roe vs. Wade. So where did he think they were going to go? They weren't likely to vote for Obama, so he ended up picking a candidate that basically preaches to the choir.

Unfortunately, in this country in 2008 it is unlikely that a non-Christian (even a Jew or someone of any other religion, for that matter) could be elected President. This is because the Christian right has decided they want THEIR religious views to control the legislative process (look at the travesty that was the Terri Schiavo case, for example). There should never have been a Faith Forum at all. The candidates should have said that religion is separate from politics, and a Faith Forum would be inappropriate.

Here is the text of the First Amendment to the Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

This is pretty clear -- "Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of religion"... and yet the evangelical Christian right in this country wants to subvert the Constitution and insinuate themselves into the political process because they will never be happy unless they completely control this government and the law-making process.

Take a look at the 1994 case of Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District vs. Grumet, 512 U.S. 687. Writing for the majority, Supreme Court Justice David Souter wrote that "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion".

In other words, this nation was NOT established as a Christian nation, nor should religion be allowed to intrude into the political system or be a litmus test for political office. If it was intended to be a Christian nation, the Constitution would have the words God, Christ, Christianity, and Jesus all over it. Yet I'm not sure that in my lifetime I will see a Presidential election where the Christian right does not force itself into a process that they clearly have no right to. And frankly, I find that really sad. Something to think about when the next President takes the oath of office, including the oath to uphold the Constitution. ALL of it, for ALL Americans.

Bristol Palin and the political opportunity

By now, readers, you have heard that the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, is going to be a grandmother. Yes, her 17-year old daughter is with child and unmarried. Well, whaddya know! Instead of seeing this as a bad thing, some extreme right-wing evangelicals are actually happy about it! Not only did the Governor herself decide to keep her Down Syndrome child, which I think is actually a wonderful thing to do -- but then again, she is married and has a good job -- but her daughter has expanded the right-to-life's argument by getting herself pregnant at 17! I can only hope she's better at picking out names than her parents!

So who's the baby daddy? A Levi Johnston, 18 years old, who (according to his MySpace page) says -- between all the expletives -- that he doesn't want to have kids.

But wait.... there's apparently going to be a shotgun wedding! After all, grandma is running for veep, we can't have her daughter pregnant and unmarried! So let's force her irresponsible daughter into a marriage with an immature doofus, why don't we? We have a political point to make here!

The right-wing evangelicals, in their zeal to push their right-to-life views, are using this girl. We all know they want to overturn Roe v. Wade, and boy, did they find a cheerleader in Gov. Palin, who wants to overturn it even in the event of rape or incest. Now, Bristol Palin has every right to keep her baby, and more power to her. But for the evangelical right to use this girl's unfortunate situation to make political hay is just downright disgusting.

I don't like abortion; but I have known a case where it was actually the most humane thing to do as the fetus was not viable outside the womb (and this was the unfortunate situation for a woman who was 38, married, and desperately wanted children). For people like her, if for no one else, we need to keep in mind that the next President will undoubtedly make some more appointments to the Supreme Court. Keep that in mind when you vote in November.