i'm doing the "legal thing" this time while transferring continents {instead of taking night trains from zurich to berlin and hoping scary German customs officers don't notice i've overstayed my welcome} & it turns out the visa process is a real pain in the arse {and expensive}. so, while running around gr today copying/faxing/mailing/attaining info, McCain chooses Palin and the Republican party rejoices in unison. this is, of course, frightening.
although my conservative friends hate me for it, i have a lot of respect for Hillary Clinton. we don't agree, but she is a formidable opponent. she has poise, intellegence, even elegance, and is fearlessly and boldy feminist without apology. a lot of Conservative talk surrounding Sarah Palin has been about her ability to be beauty pageant contestant, mother, and politician, and while there's nothing wrong with that, there's something sneaky about Republicans who try to say that Palin is representative of what feminism ought to be.
although my conservative friends hate me for it, i have a lot of respect for Hillary Clinton. we don't agree, but she is a formidable opponent. she has poise, intellegence, even elegance, and is fearlessly and boldy feminist without apology. a lot of Conservative talk surrounding Sarah Palin has been about her ability to be beauty pageant contestant, mother, and politician, and while there's nothing wrong with that, there's something sneaky about Republicans who try to say that Palin is representative of what feminism ought to be.
a couple other points: one, just because Palin was the Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission does not mean she is an energy expert. two, just because she lives "near Russia"{clip from Jared} doesn't mean she's a foreign policy expert. An expert should probably have a PhD in the field... or a lot of experience.Finally, how does one reconcile this: "She is a fierce opponent of abortion and same sex marriage. She supports the death penalty and the teaching of creationism in schools" {the guardian}. let me ignore same sex marriage and creationism for now, but if "life" so-called is such a big voting issue for Conservatives {and i know it is often the determining factor for voters}, how is abortion unacceptable and the death penalty acceptable?
McCain/Palin is no more appealing to me than Obama/Biden, and since I've had plenty of negative to say about the Repubs, here's just a little about the Dems:
"There are no disciples of small government in the Democratic Party, and Barack Obama fits right in. His economic program is based on the assumption that the economy is to the president what a marionette is to a puppeteer, requiring his direction and responding to his every wish.
Anyone partial to free markets, restrained government, fiscal discipline and light taxation approaches a Democratic nominee's economic platform with trepidation, expecting one fright after another. Obama does not disappoint" {Reason magazine}.
while i still find this race banal and the issues as unresolved as ever, i am slowly and reluctantly being pulled back in to the fray, party-ing shall we say. ahhhh.
p.s. marian sent me this nice article about the dnc logo & i think it's right on. it looks ridiculous {see pic above}. & this is also something to keep in mind.
9 comments:
"and hoping scary German customs officers don't notice i've overstayed my welcome}"
They're not, the whole thing was just a bit confusing.
"it turns out the visa process is a real pain in the arse {and expensive}"
In the UK, not Germany. :-)
Dear Jess-i-ca,
I read your post with mixed feelings! It seems you do not approve of me and my nomination to run with McCain for presidency.
I really know a lot about Russia. Living in Alaska is the closest you can get to Russia! It really is, I checked it out on a map to be certain.
Your claim of me not being feminist is sad. Of course you should know that I support feminisme and all things feminine! I was a beauty queen after all and was elected "most girly" in high school in my Yearbook. You see, I am very feminist indeed.
Also please not that the bible says how the world was created. This thing called "evolution" is merely a theory. We are supposed to have evolved from small cells like bacteria? How ridiculous is that? Of course god made us in 6 days (because those cursed communist labor unions made him stop working on the 7th day). I am a male rib and you are one as well! Don't ever forget that.
Abortion is evil, all women who do so go straight to hell. And the death penalty is a good thing, it is much cheaper than locking vile bl... err criminals up for life. It is just. The bible says "eye for an eye".
As you see I am more than fit to run for vice president and keep in mind that if McCain (who's clocking in at 70-something) would happen to die while in office you would have the first woman ever (!) to be in the highest office of the US. This is quite important. Other countries such as "Europe" have had women in such positions already many years before the US!
Yours faithfully,
Sarah Palin
it was a pain in Germany... but more because of my situation, not the process itself.
ha ha to the satirical sarah.
also, just a general comment: i'm really tired of race and gender being such big issues. while i agree it would be nice to see more women in high offices, i wouldn't vote for the woman just because she's a woman. i would vote for the person with better qualifications.
on facebook you can choose to label yourself with a political identity, and over the past few months, people have been putting "Barack Obama" as theirs. this is aggravating. people worship bothers me. uninformed political activism bothers me. this of course comes from the Republican side as well, in the form of any number of absurd arguments about why John McCain is a good Republican...
Finally, if it is not acceptable for someone to NOT vote for a man because he is black, why is it acceptable to vote for a man simply because he's black. I know there are many out there who agree with Obama's positions. I guess then, this is not for you.
Jess, finally I agree completely with what you said. I actually wrote a paper in college about how angry I get when people connect themselves with someone black because they're black. In my mind that is just as racist as not associating with blacks.
I also don't like "people worship." Or for that matter, party worship. And voting for the qualifications not the gender or race--or party. This in regards to your comment.
As for your blog-I've always wondered how someone could think abortion was wrong and the death penalty was okay, too. I know in the Catholic version it's because the death penalty can be viewed as the same as justifiable war. I don't know whether you think they're both wrong or both okay, but I personally don't believe in taking life in any case, death penalty included. As far as war, I think we have the right to defend ourselves but not to do what was done in this war.
Just a side note regarding the death penalty. It is according to the Pope the the death penalty may be acceptable in very extreme and limited cases. People in general don't treat the death penalty that way. Shannon wrote a great paper refuting the death penalty.
Good luck on going the legal route, but hey, sneaking in means you have better stories to tell...
Since I am a fan, from a positive political standpoint*, of McCain choosing Palin--and possibly the biggest fan of her amongst your readers--I'll take a stab at responding...
If you're concerned about conservatives and Republicans rejoicing in unison concerning Palin, check out National Review. You'll certainly see a lot more yeas than nays, but it's hardly criticism-free. I swiped a couple of them from Ramesh Ponnuru in my Palin post, as well.
I think Mark Steyn's description of Palin is probably somewhere close to the median for conservatives (and a little bit less serious and more humorous than most of the analysis over at National Review). A fair bit of why conservatives like Palin is due to personal characteristics (Palin is not an average politician, as noted by her political history and current extreme popularity in the state she governs; her background connects with a great portion of heartland voters, who make up most of the Republican base; people like attractive people), but that is normal in politics. She has, however, done things that conservatives can take joy in, most notably beating up on political corruption and pork within her own party.
On energy expertise: in an absolute sense, Palin is not an expert. Even for a politician (where "expertise" is not the same thing as detailed academic knowledge), there are plenty of politicians who have more experience than Palin. In a relative sense, compared to the three other relevant individuals, she brings more to the table than those three combined. This says much more about the lack of experience of Obama and relative indifference of McCain and Biden to this subject, however.
Concerning foreign policy experience, yeah, I agree with a couple of the commenters in that post that Steve Doocy was making a joke, and agree with the others that had he not been making a joke, he would have been a fool. Palin is weak on foreign policy experience (negotiating a pipeline with Canada notwithstanding); there is no question about that, and things like "she was in charge of the Alaska National Guard" are hokey and counter-productive for supporters. But considering McCain's foreign policy experience (greater than most post-WWII candidates but less than Eisenhower, Stevenson, and George H.W. Bush), it's a lower risk than if, say, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton had picked a candidate with Palin's attributes. There are conservatives who disagree with this line of thought, however--David Frum being one of them. He wanted a VP candidate with more foreign policy experience and more political experience in general.
Regarding abortion versus the death penalty, that's a very complex question and I can't do much more here than to offer up a thumbnail sketch of a response, so please forgive me for the brevity and clunkiness of this answer... I also shall attempt not to divulge my personal beliefs in this explanation, given that they are irrelevant to the question of logical consistency; I must, however, admit my bias as I get to it...
Some conservatives--Catholics, in particular--are opposed to both abortion and the death penalty. Ramesh Ponnuru may be the best currently-living example of this set of thought, with the religious side of such arguments starting from the idea that man has no right to take away life, under any circumstances and the utilitarian side described following. This is a minority view among conservatives, though.
The majority view is to reject abortion (except under certain extreme circumstances) and allow the death penalty. ONE quick-and-dirty reasoning for this is that people have a G-d-given right to live, but by performing certain heinous actions, they forfeit this right. A more utilitarian argument would note that there are costs and benefits to the death penalty. Justice served to those who destroy the fundamental rules of civilization, prevention of future evil actions on the part of the perpetrator, and deterrence of similar acts by others are the benefits for the death penalty. On the other hand, there are costs: the diminishing of the sanctity of human life and the possibility of ending the life of an innocent person being two of them. Institutional factors will, as well, affect these benefits and costs (with actions such as mandatory appeals, a separate sentencing period for whether the death penalty be appropriate, and stricter standards of guilt in capital cases being three ways of lowering the costs, for example). Individuals who support the death penalty on utilitarian grounds find the benefits outweighing the costs, whereas those who disagree on utilitarian grounds hold the opposite.
As such, to sum up how an individual could find abortion unacceptable and capital punishment acceptable: individuals who receive the death penalty did something to deserve it, whereas individuals who are aborted did not.
Naturally, there are other combinations which are logically possible and defensible: no to both and yes to both. I would find it harder to, without using mental gymnastics, have a logical reasoning for yes to abortion (especially late-term) but no to the death penalty, but I will admit bias and say that some could give it a good try and quite possibly succeed.
* - And, to an extent, from a normative standpoint, although I think that Phil Gramm, Romney, or John Kasich would have been better from a normative standpoint if the choice did not at all affect the likelihood of McCain being elected.
I believe that most Democrats justify abortion is okay because of the privacy rights of the mother and that they believe capital punishment is wrong because it is a fully grown human, with no other human to consider in sustaining said human's life. With that said, the person in question allegedly committed a horrible crime and, what I hear most people argue, is that they don't want to pay to keep someone in jail and would rather have the death penalty executed (no pun intended). As much as I agree with the previous comment, I can see why some people justify abortion and not capital punishment. Seems ludicrous. The really sad fact is that 1. If you look back in time, most of the people who commit these death penalty level of crimes had such heinous lives that they barely had a chance, and 2. You would be amazed at the number of people that have been executed only to have been found innocent after it was too late. We just shouldn't take lightly something so valuable as human life.
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