Chronically Pissed

Palin' Around

Allow me to suggest a new campaign ad:

McCain & Palin...

Do we really need another retarded child in the White House?

Save your hyperventilating comments. I just had to get that little gem off my chest. Again, I think it's a valid issue - I'm sure crying kids were just adorable in the Alaska statehouse, but I'm not sure America wants its vice-president (and very likely president) distracted by a mentally disabled baby. I'm not sure we need the vice-president guilting America into overturning Roe vs. Wade by trotting out little Trig in his helmet while the White House staff pretends that the White House hasn't been turned into one big March of Dimes telethon/daycare center.

Okay, I'll drop that issue for a while...I promise.

Let's talk about sex...

Ms. Palin made a play for HIllary's supporters yesterday, praising Hillary and Geraldine Ferraro for their past accomplishments, as if Palin doesn't disagree with everything they stand for. The crowd in the auditorium cheered these words, as if they don't hate HIllary with every ounce of themselves. So let me get this straight...the Republican party is suddenly into diversity for the sake of diversity? Conservative voters are suddenly interested in cracking that glass ceiling now that Ms. Palin is on their ticket?

Bullshit, I say. Republicans - men and women alike - have never given a shit about that glass ceiling. Women should be home popping out babies and scrubbing underwear stains, as far as they're concerned. Please don't pretend that you're suddenly a party of feminists determined to break barriers. Sarah Palin is not ready to break those barriers. She's a peppy little soccer mom from Fuckshit, Alaska who made something of herself in a state whose total population is only a little larger than that of the city of Baltimore. Let's have her debate Hillary Clinton, just to contrast and compare their grasp of the issues and knowledge of the world outside Alaska.

Speaking of debates, the Obama campaign should immediately demand more than one vice-presidential debate. After all, we barely know Sarah Palin. America needs a chance to learn a lot about her in a very short time. What better way to shed some light on her views and personality than a handful of debates with Joe Biden?

Finally, everyone is comparing Sarah's selection to the nomination of Dan Quayle in 1988. To me, this feels more like the Harriet Miers debacle. The problem with Harriet Miers was not her relative anonymity, it was her lack of intellectual credibility. She was a lightweight being nominated to a job reserved for the very brightest because of her ideological positions and pliability. I'm sure Sarah Palin is a very nice lady, and I'm sure many Americans will like her...as a person. I hope, however, that they will see that she is clearly not ready for this job. She is being used by a desperate and cynical old man for her lack of a penis. Thanks, but no thanks, John.

The Abortion Mailbag

Okay, let me respond to the comments I've received about "Meet Miss Alaska (runner-up)," in which I implied that the existence of Ms. Palin's Down syndrome-inflicted 5th child might indicate some poor judgment on her part. My thoughts on reproduction, genetic testing, and abortion probably deserve a more developed treatment than this, but you'll have to settle for this, for now.

Here's the thing: I know that even as a pro-choice liberal I'm supposed to indicate that of course abortion is bad, that everyone would prefer fewer unwanted pregnancies and thus fewer abortions, that in an ideal world there would be no abortions. Well...sorry, but I just don't feel that way. First term abortions, which make up 91% of all abortions performed in the U.S., are, to me, the moral equivalent of having melanoma removed from your shoulder after overexposure to the sun on vacation, of getting stitches after you've fallen down a flight of stairs while carelessly multitasking, or any other minor, outpatient procedure that might have been avoided, but wasn't. Should we try to avoid the problem first? Absolutely. Does that have anything to do with the remedies available to us? No.

Medical science provides us with safe ways of treating a wide range of medical conditions, one of which is pregnancy, which happens to be the result of one of the things human beings most frequently engage in while not using all of their mental faculties. Yes, that little clump of cells will one day become a screaming little asshole while you're trying to get a decent night's sleep, but until then, it's really just a clump of cells, folks. (Unless of course you believe in magic.) Medical science has also gifted us with the amazing ability to make determinations about the chromosomal health of the fetus very early in pregnancy, sparing us the emotional anguish of aborting something that has started to look like a human being.

Medical science also gives us the amazing ability to correct and/or eliminate things that are not as they should be. (I've never heard anyone defend the rights of irradiated cancer cells.) This means that we can spare ourselves and full-term infants the agonizing misery of certain horrific chromosomal disorders like spina bifida and anencephaly and yes...Down's syndrome. I know, I know, "they're so happy and full of love." Well if they're so happy then why aren't we trying to genetically manufacture that extra chromosome? If they have so much love, why don't we clone retarded babies and repopulate the world with them? I'll tell you why: Because they suffer from a defect that is debilitating in the course of a normal human existence. Nothing is more depressing than seeing old couples with dead faces, walking through the mall with their 30-year old bundle of happiness and love, their entire lives having been sucked out of them caring for the mental equivalent of a three year old during what should have been their golden years.

If you're shocked and appalled by this, you're probably confusing my belief that we should take advantage of medial science to eradicate this particular defect with contempt for retarded people. This would be a mistake. If I sound a little harsh, it's because I do harbor contempt for parents who knowingly bring them into the world, knowing what a hard existence it will be for everyone involved.

Call me heartless, but it feels like compassion to me. I don't want to see people suffer. I want people to take advantage of the wonders of modern science to increase their happiness and thus the happiness of their fellow citizens. I also don't see how anyone can think that abortion should be safe and legal while believing that it is ultimately bad. I don't believe that abortion is bad. I believe that it should be safe and legal. I abhor people who choose to bring babies to term knowing that they will die an excruciating and  revolting death within days or months. I abhor people who are irresponsible enough to not find these things out through genetic testing - particularly when they are older and more likely to encounter these disorders.

I know I've meandered a bit here, but I just wanted to try to lay out an explanation for what some of you have perceived as callousness. Yes, I do question the judgment of a woman who had a child at the age of 43 without taking the health and happiness of that child into consideration. I do think that a wise and compassionate person would have overcome their own vanity and selfish desire enough to terminate that pregnancy. I know that's hard to ingest, but you don't read this blog for pussyfooting around, do you?

Yes We Can

I'm only a little embarrassed to say that this performance choked me up last night. In case you missed it...

Meet Miss Alaska (runner up)

Congratulations to the 1984 Miss Wasilla and the Miss Alaska runner-up in the same year on being named the running mate of John McCain, 72, in the 2008 United States presidential election.  Her vast experience, aside from being a pageant queen, includes sitting on the Wasilla (pop. 5469) city council, then serving as mayor of Wasilla. She was elected to governorship of the 47th most populous state in the union in  December of 2006. She also managed to pop out five children, one of which has Down's syndrome, indicating questionable genes and questionable decision-making skills...if you know what I mean. Also, will anyone have the balls to ask how she plans to be vice-president (and, given her running mate's advanced age, probably the president someday) while raising a retarded infant?

In any event, we look forward to learning more about Ms. Palin's exciting life story. Congrats!

On Hope & Change

The fashionable thing to expect from Obama's speech tonight seems to be a "filling out" of his positions. Even liberal commentators have jumped on the bandwagon to call for a more detailed version of Obama's vision. Conservatives bring it up more often than John McCain brings up his POW status - and without the shame that you'd expect from people who revere Ronald Regan and George W. Bush, neither of whom were exactly what you'd call brainiacs. Neither seem to remember that Al Gore and John Kerry were lambasted for being overly loquacious about their policies while W smirked and stammered his way to victory.

While I wish we lived in a society that was more interested in the nuances of...well, anything...we don't. We live in a society than needs everything bottled up into thirty-second sound bytes, lest we distract anyone from Grey's Anatomy or the MLB penant race for too long. The second Barack Obama starts to rattle off a litany of specific proposals, all of which can be found at his website, Americans will stop paying attention and either revert back to the political positions they inherited at birth or, more probably, regress into apathy.

What Barack Obama offers us - what is embodied in the eloquent speeches and the mantras of "Hope" and "Change"- is a return to government for the people, by the people; a rational and compassionate way out of the mess we've gotten ourselves into; the wisdom and vision of a man who sees the world as a whole, rather than as a galaxy in which every speck of dust revolves around the United States of America; the assurance that decisions regarding our future will not be made in an intellectually homogeneous vacuum, or by small gangs of men whose sole concern is squeezing every penny out of those decisions.

Change and Hope are not just generic words, as some have charged, designed to capitalize on the abysmal approval ratings of Republicans across the country. Change is the promise of the opposite of the last eight years. Hope is the promise of an optimism that we can scarcely remember having felt. In the current zeitgeist, these two words contain worlds of information for anyone listening with an open mind.

I, for one, hope that Barack continues to inspire us with these promises. Reasonable people know that there will be successes and failures, that we will disagree with President Obama from time to time, that some people will do everything in their power to tear him down from the moment he is elected. We're content to know that a good and brilliant man will be sitting in our Oval Office, upholding the honor and integrity of our Constitution. 

Some Daily Show Brilliance

I'm feeling lazy. Watch this, bitches...

She Did It

At long last, Hillary has redeemed herself. At long last, we can now ignore the crazy bitches that have been stealing this convention from Barack Obama. Bill Kristol can continue to foam at the mouth with his personal criticisms of her speech (as he's currently doing on Fox "News") and the McCain camp can continue to rehash primary debates in an attempt to split the party (because they know they don't have shit else to run on), but Democrats have one less thing to worry about tonight. Hillary Clinton moved on and made it clear that America MUST elect Barack Obama.

What She Must Say

While I deplore the way the Clintons behaved in the Democratic primary, I think I understand their thinking. Bear with me for a second here...

Bill Clinton is enough of a political genius to have foreseen that Americans still have enough hatred in them to prevent Obama from winning. The Hillary campaign couldn't afford to say that outright, so they had to base their attempts to defeat Obama on the experience issue. With some effort, I can bring myself to believe that the Clintons thought they were doing what was best for this country. If one believes that the Democrats MUST win this election, then we have to consider that the Clintons might just have been justified - at least in their own minds - in going to great extremes to beat a candidate that they believed could not win.

Sadly, they may turn out to be right, but now that the primary is over they have no choice but to throw the full force of their political will into helping Obama win. We don't need to hear any more about the historic nature of her candidacy. We don't need to hear more about the cracked glass ceiling. All we need to hear is something along these lines: "I appreciate the passionate support of so many Americans. If, however, you truly believe in the issues that I've been fighting for my whole life - issues which include the rights of women - you must immediately channel that passion into electing Barack Obama. If, as I've been told, there are actually supporters of mine out there who are promising to vote for John McCain, I must be straightforward with you. You are being foolish. You are diminishing our cause. You are threatening to hurt women, children, working people, the uninsured, the poor, the middle-class, white, black, and latino. I hereby disavow you, your support, and your childish temper tantrums. No supporter of mine would ever - EVER - vote for John McCain."

Hilary must shock America with her speech tonight and place her supporters, by force, if necessary, in line behind Barack Obama. Nothing less will do. 

If She Wasn't A Lesbian...

Rachel Maddow tears Pat Buchanan and John McCain shiny, new assholes in this AMAZING clip:

More from the Convention...

Classic Maher - speaking the truth between inane interjections by Chris Matthews: