Okay, I think Palin is a bad choice for VP. I think this for a lot of reasons, mostly having to do with her lack of experience, blatant lying, and corruption charges. There's also that I think McCain should have said a hearty "Fuck You" to all the people telling him not to go with Lieberman or someone similarly moderate-- The Republicans are going to vote for you, the Democrats (barring the crazy ones) are going to vote for Obama. It's the undecided voters who you have to attract. If conservative voters think you aren't conservative enough, they aren't going to throw a hissy and vote for Obama (unless they're the parallels to the Clinton-> McCain people, who I suppose might exist). Go moderate! Attract the undecideds! Don't drive them away!
Anyway. I've been accused of thinking this because I'm sexist. I'm probably not going to convince these people that I'm not.
But, I think this image is hysterical. So apparently now I'm picking on her kids.
No, see, I'm not. I feel bad for Bristol. She's in an embarrassing situation (or I'd like to think it's embarrassing, but times change), and she's under media scrutiny to boot. Furthermore, I highly doubt that marrying her boyfriend is her idea (or his). I feel bad for all those kids, because there's five of them and I think that's a bad idea in general.
I'm picking on her mother. Because Bristol's pregnancy is her mom's fault. Or her dad's. Both, really. It's her parents' fault.
A teenage pregnancy represents a critical failure in parenting. I'm not saying all fuck ups get knocked up, or that if your kid isn't up the duff that you're doing fine. I am saying that, if your daughter is pregnant/your son knocked a girl up, you (singular or plural, depending on how many parents there are) fucked up bad somewhere down the line.
I highly doubt there are exceptions to this.
You, the Palin family, the Spears family, the family of anyone you knew in high school (or god forbid middle school) who was knocked up/knocked someone up, failed. There's no partial credit here. Almost doesn't count.
Your (their) failure was in one or more of these areas:
-Keeping an eye on your damn kid. I realise this isn't possible 24/7, but you should know who your kid is hanging around with and what sort of people they are.
-Raising your kid with your belief system (if applicable). I'm willing to bet Sarah Palin thinks you should stay a virgin till you're married, but evidently she didn't get that through to Bristol.
-Teaching your kid about sex and birth control. Even if you hope your kid will never use the information, even if your religion bans birth control entirely. Because (see last point) your kid may find themselves wanting that information. If you tell your kid that condoms fail more often than they succeed, and your kid doesn't use them, that is your fault. If you neglect to tell your kids that "pull & pray" is not a valid BC option, and they use that, it is your fault.
These three are supplementary reasons. They always go with this, the one thing that I've noticed in all teenage pregnancies (and related teenage fuckups like eloping with a random internet 30-year-old) :
You failed to instill the respect for her/himself and others needed to not have sex then.
Maybe you never paid enough attention to your kid and s/he thinks you don't love him/her.
Maybe you support your daughter's shopping habit instead of making sure she has self esteem that isn't contingent on others' approval.
Maybe you never had the chat with your son that every woman is someone's daughter, and possibly someone's sister or their future wife- treat her like you'd want someone else to treat your future wife.
Maybe you never told your kids that if their friends wouldn't be friends with them over something they didn't want to do, they're not their friends in the first place.
Maybe you didn't inspire your children to strive for anything better. The girls who got pregnant when I was in high school stayed in that small town, working jobs like gas station clerk and ice cream scooper. None have gotten any education after high school, not even stupid pottery courses at the local community college or anything like that. Some still live with their parents. But hey, why not have a baby in high school if no-one's ever showed you how life great can be if you get to go at it full force, if no-one's shown the confidence in you to tell you about it?
This is the vital one. Tell your kids that they don't have to have sex to be cool, they don't have to have sex to be loved. Tell them that they can see the world and have everything they never even knew they wanted, if they don't limit themselves by having a baby in high school. Make sure they believe you.
If you were a teenage parent yourself, is less damaging for you to say "I(we) love you and I couldn't live without you, but I could have given you a better life if I'd waited a few years to have you" than for you to let them believe that what you did was fine or even brilliant. If you have a first-hand example of how hard it was and how you never got the things you wanted, and you don't get it through to your kid, you are a double fuck up.
If you are the guardian of a teen who is/got someone else pregnant, you cannot call yourself a parent. Your lack of parenting ability has gimped your child's chances of a successful future. The fault for your kid's fuck up falls squarely on you. You are a fuck up.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
29.8.08
Hi Pot, I'm Kettle.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7588435.stm
Wait, so, you're going to attack Obama for being too young and inexperienced in foreign policy... And then choose a vice president who's not even finished serving one term as governor of Alaska (previously mayor of a town of 8,000*), and is in fact younger than Obama?
Your vice president, who becomes the President of the Senate and furthermore becomes president in the event that your 72-year-old self keels over, has two of the main qualities you've been attacking in your opponent, except she has them even more so?
My god, you're really riding this Clinton-Obama cattiness, aren't you?
*(spokesman in article quoted as saying 9000, a 2004 census pegs it at 7,738, claimed here .)
Wait, so, you're going to attack Obama for being too young and inexperienced in foreign policy... And then choose a vice president who's not even finished serving one term as governor of Alaska (previously mayor of a town of 8,000*), and is in fact younger than Obama?
Your vice president, who becomes the President of the Senate and furthermore becomes president in the event that your 72-year-old self keels over, has two of the main qualities you've been attacking in your opponent, except she has them even more so?
My god, you're really riding this Clinton-Obama cattiness, aren't you?
*(spokesman in article quoted as saying 9000, a 2004 census pegs it at 7,738, claimed here .)
28.7.08
God and Politics with my brother
I hung out with my brother this weekend, spending some 5 hours with him in my little car putting between where we live and work and where my parents live and work. We butt heads a lot -- mostly over my belief that he's a major closet case -- but at least I'm not beating the snot out of him anymore.
He spends his summers working at a Christian summer camp, which he really enjoys. I'm a little jealous, because in my mind it means he gets paid to go to camp each summer, and I *mostly* enjoyed summer camp the years I went. We talked about his campers, and the activities, and the difference between the summer camp I went to in Texas ("Yay, we're all at camp! ... and we're all Christian, neat!") and the camp I went to after our family moved ("Yay, we're all Christian.... and we're outdoors!"). The camp he's working at is toward the middle ground, probably enough to make me feel uncomfortable if I were attending, but not make me feel uncomfortable about the way they're teaching others.
It came around to the fact that his roommate where he's living next year is atheist (or he assumes so, all he knows is roommate does not plan to go to church), and, while he doesn't want to hide his faith, he doesn't want to drive his roommate away, either-- because he's actually done that before and he doesn't want to be "That Guy."
We talked a lot about faith-- because he's clearly fairly devout and I left the church at 14-- and I have to say that should he reconsider entering the seminary, I'd vouch for him (as much as a heathen's opinion would count). He's a shining example, so far, of a hymn I liked way back when, the chorus of which was "They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love."
We talked about a local street preacher, who rails against everyone and everything with such regularity that a friend made bingo cards to pass out and host a game with his sermon (Gays, faith, free square, marriage, prayer! BINGO!). Apparently, last time the preacher was out, Xavier sat out with a dry erase board to quickly scribble "Ask me about God," "Ask me about that submission thing" and so forth, because the street preacher's problem is "a lack of gentleness." He told me about how, the preacher will rail about women needing to submit to their husbands, and my brother will tell the people who ask that, in context, that Bible verse is followed with an exhortation that a man should be willing to do anything to protect and care for his wife, to love his wife as Christ loved the Church.
He said that when the preacher packed up for the day, some of the hecklers waved him over to ask him what he thought of the sermon. "Well, you know... I believe, we're all on the same team, but some people just kick the ball backwards sometimes."
We talked about politics-- actually, I said to him, "Xav, you're fairly intelligent," ("Thank you, C," he says) "but... not to say you're stupid, but you're part of a religion that tends to have unintelligent opinions on this. Abortion, gay marriage. Go."
He took gay marriage first, acknowledged that he did think of marriage as a religious thing and that, by religion, it's one man and one woman. We went back and forth a little, about a secular definition and a religious definition and whose business it is, and he says that the government should be allowed to grant "togetherness" to any two consenting adults who want to sign up (for semantic purposes, he was calling this a civil union, I was calling it a marriage). And, he continued, churches and synagogues and what have you can grant togetherness to any consenting adults they want (he says marriage, i say wedding-age). However, never the twain shall meet-- a religious ceremony should have no bearing on custody, taxes, insurance, etc. If you want to get the civil ceremony and nothing else, cool. If you want to get the civil ceremony and a religious one on top, well, hey, that's cool too. If you want to get the religious ceremony with no civil ceremony, that's your prerogative, but don't expect survivor's benefits from social security or to be acknowledged in any other official instance.
Ideally, I said, it would have been like this in the first place, and then you wouldn't have churches trying to claim that they're just trying to protect themselves from being sued when they won't let gay couples wed there. "Yep," he said, with a facial expression of "too bad someone fucked it up." (except that Xav doesn't swear.)
We moved on to abortion -- Xav being who he is and me having worked with pro-reproductive-rights special interest groups.
He's big on "adoption is an option too," but he realises that it's not *always* an option. Apparently the oral Torah included the specific instruction that, up to the point a baby was halfway out, its mother's life trumped it-- being a life in action rather than a potential life. So, if the medicine available at the time could save one or the other, mother won. So, abortion for health reasons, he says he has no reason to be against. I could maybe have gotten his more specific beliefs about when it is/isn't okay if i kept going, but we got sidetracked by birth control.
Birth control he's in support of. We talked about methods, about how they work, that Plan B will actually not stop a pregnancy if the zygote's implanted, which he was surprised (and happy) to learn-- he feels he can support it now. After that, we talked about when life begins -- because he doesn't really feel comfortable trying to figure that out with no medical education, and because I feel that it's stupid to declare it at conception when more than 2/3 of pregnancies miscarry before 6 weeks. I said "God doesn't seem to think life begins before then," he countered with a Bible verse stating that "I was sinful from when I was first conceived,"-- but he still doesn't see that as foolproof evidence of life-at-conception, because, while humanity makes you sinful, does sinfulness make you human?
We talked about abstinence-only sex education, about the statistic that teens wait on average 9 months longer than tradition sex-ed students-- but then they don't use protection, either because they were never told about it, or because they were told it was ineffective. (I didn't tell him about this comic ) He said the main problem is that home and school each rely on the other to fill in the blanks, and the blanks aren't getting filled.
Upshot of the car-ride home:
Abstinence is ideal, but talk with your kid about the what-ifs.
Birth control prevents abortions. You can't say every sperm or every egg is sacred when your body will waste them anyway.
A woman's life always trumps the life of an unborn child (in the medical sense, not in the "but i won't get to go partyyyyy" sense).
Religious weddings and government-recognised togetherness should not be the same thing.
Women, obey your husbands, but husbands, love your wives.
You can preach without being acerbic, and will in fact win more hearts with gentleness.
You can practise your faith without being overbearing, because scaring away a roommate is not good PR for your religion.
Can't guarantee I'd convert, but I'd go to a church my brother preached at.
--
Today's tidbit from work:
Coworker shows up late from her attempt to get court records. Apparently, "that twat at the courthouse" tells her that she needs case numbers. Coworker told her that she's always gotten them by name before, twat snottily responded "Well, we're about to close, and it'll take a long time to find them."
Coworker relating this: "I almost blew up on her, but then I thought, 'wait, no, Things Not to Do, blow up on someone in a courthouse.'"
He spends his summers working at a Christian summer camp, which he really enjoys. I'm a little jealous, because in my mind it means he gets paid to go to camp each summer, and I *mostly* enjoyed summer camp the years I went. We talked about his campers, and the activities, and the difference between the summer camp I went to in Texas ("Yay, we're all at camp! ... and we're all Christian, neat!") and the camp I went to after our family moved ("Yay, we're all Christian.... and we're outdoors!"). The camp he's working at is toward the middle ground, probably enough to make me feel uncomfortable if I were attending, but not make me feel uncomfortable about the way they're teaching others.
It came around to the fact that his roommate where he's living next year is atheist (or he assumes so, all he knows is roommate does not plan to go to church), and, while he doesn't want to hide his faith, he doesn't want to drive his roommate away, either-- because he's actually done that before and he doesn't want to be "That Guy."
We talked a lot about faith-- because he's clearly fairly devout and I left the church at 14-- and I have to say that should he reconsider entering the seminary, I'd vouch for him (as much as a heathen's opinion would count). He's a shining example, so far, of a hymn I liked way back when, the chorus of which was "They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love."
We talked about a local street preacher, who rails against everyone and everything with such regularity that a friend made bingo cards to pass out and host a game with his sermon (Gays, faith, free square, marriage, prayer! BINGO!). Apparently, last time the preacher was out, Xavier sat out with a dry erase board to quickly scribble "Ask me about God," "Ask me about that submission thing" and so forth, because the street preacher's problem is "a lack of gentleness." He told me about how, the preacher will rail about women needing to submit to their husbands, and my brother will tell the people who ask that, in context, that Bible verse is followed with an exhortation that a man should be willing to do anything to protect and care for his wife, to love his wife as Christ loved the Church.
He said that when the preacher packed up for the day, some of the hecklers waved him over to ask him what he thought of the sermon. "Well, you know... I believe, we're all on the same team, but some people just kick the ball backwards sometimes."
We talked about politics-- actually, I said to him, "Xav, you're fairly intelligent," ("Thank you, C," he says) "but... not to say you're stupid, but you're part of a religion that tends to have unintelligent opinions on this. Abortion, gay marriage. Go."
He took gay marriage first, acknowledged that he did think of marriage as a religious thing and that, by religion, it's one man and one woman. We went back and forth a little, about a secular definition and a religious definition and whose business it is, and he says that the government should be allowed to grant "togetherness" to any two consenting adults who want to sign up (for semantic purposes, he was calling this a civil union, I was calling it a marriage). And, he continued, churches and synagogues and what have you can grant togetherness to any consenting adults they want (he says marriage, i say wedding-age). However, never the twain shall meet-- a religious ceremony should have no bearing on custody, taxes, insurance, etc. If you want to get the civil ceremony and nothing else, cool. If you want to get the civil ceremony and a religious one on top, well, hey, that's cool too. If you want to get the religious ceremony with no civil ceremony, that's your prerogative, but don't expect survivor's benefits from social security or to be acknowledged in any other official instance.
Ideally, I said, it would have been like this in the first place, and then you wouldn't have churches trying to claim that they're just trying to protect themselves from being sued when they won't let gay couples wed there. "Yep," he said, with a facial expression of "too bad someone fucked it up." (except that Xav doesn't swear.)
We moved on to abortion -- Xav being who he is and me having worked with pro-reproductive-rights special interest groups.
He's big on "adoption is an option too," but he realises that it's not *always* an option. Apparently the oral Torah included the specific instruction that, up to the point a baby was halfway out, its mother's life trumped it-- being a life in action rather than a potential life. So, if the medicine available at the time could save one or the other, mother won. So, abortion for health reasons, he says he has no reason to be against. I could maybe have gotten his more specific beliefs about when it is/isn't okay if i kept going, but we got sidetracked by birth control.
Birth control he's in support of. We talked about methods, about how they work, that Plan B will actually not stop a pregnancy if the zygote's implanted, which he was surprised (and happy) to learn-- he feels he can support it now. After that, we talked about when life begins -- because he doesn't really feel comfortable trying to figure that out with no medical education, and because I feel that it's stupid to declare it at conception when more than 2/3 of pregnancies miscarry before 6 weeks. I said "God doesn't seem to think life begins before then," he countered with a Bible verse stating that "I was sinful from when I was first conceived,"-- but he still doesn't see that as foolproof evidence of life-at-conception, because, while humanity makes you sinful, does sinfulness make you human?
We talked about abstinence-only sex education, about the statistic that teens wait on average 9 months longer than tradition sex-ed students-- but then they don't use protection, either because they were never told about it, or because they were told it was ineffective. (I didn't tell him about this comic ) He said the main problem is that home and school each rely on the other to fill in the blanks, and the blanks aren't getting filled.
Upshot of the car-ride home:
Abstinence is ideal, but talk with your kid about the what-ifs.
Birth control prevents abortions. You can't say every sperm or every egg is sacred when your body will waste them anyway.
A woman's life always trumps the life of an unborn child (in the medical sense, not in the "but i won't get to go partyyyyy" sense).
Religious weddings and government-recognised togetherness should not be the same thing.
Women, obey your husbands, but husbands, love your wives.
You can preach without being acerbic, and will in fact win more hearts with gentleness.
You can practise your faith without being overbearing, because scaring away a roommate is not good PR for your religion.
Can't guarantee I'd convert, but I'd go to a church my brother preached at.
--
Today's tidbit from work:
Coworker shows up late from her attempt to get court records. Apparently, "that twat at the courthouse" tells her that she needs case numbers. Coworker told her that she's always gotten them by name before, twat snottily responded "Well, we're about to close, and it'll take a long time to find them."
Coworker relating this: "I almost blew up on her, but then I thought, 'wait, no, Things Not to Do, blow up on someone in a courthouse.'"
4.7.08
Fireworks.
Two summers ago, I worked for a special interest group and part of my job was to read several newspapers to see if there were any articles or letters to the editor relating to our issue. At one of the papers, someone had sent in a LTE asking whether the annual fireworks show could be moved, because it woke her baby and it probably scared children and dogs as well.
While there were a few reasonable responses like "Well, there are children and dogs wherever it would be moved to, too," and "Calm down, folks, she wanted it moved, not cancelled," most of the responses were in the vein of "Honour our troops, you hate America, terrorists have won."
Fourth of July that same summer, I was in my apartment playing World of Warcraft. Very few people were online in my guild, understandably, and people were trickling out to go watch fireworks. Eventually, it was only me and DJ. I made some offhand comment about the local fireworks, and he responded that he was not going to his own local show.
Because, he said, he'd only gotten back from Iraq about two months ago. They still sounded like bombs and mortars.
Let that sink in. A soldier wouldn't/couldn't go to the show that was ostensibly for him and his comrades and those before him, because it sounded too much like where he'd been.
Enjoy your fireworks. Maybe someday tradition will dictate donating several hundred dollars (the cost of my local fireworks show, your funding my vary) to veteran's charities for Independence Day.
As for DJ, he was re-deployed last spring. He hasn't logged in since. I can only hope that it's because he quit the game. It'd be happier than any other reason.
While there were a few reasonable responses like "Well, there are children and dogs wherever it would be moved to, too," and "Calm down, folks, she wanted it moved, not cancelled," most of the responses were in the vein of "Honour our troops, you hate America, terrorists have won."
Fourth of July that same summer, I was in my apartment playing World of Warcraft. Very few people were online in my guild, understandably, and people were trickling out to go watch fireworks. Eventually, it was only me and DJ. I made some offhand comment about the local fireworks, and he responded that he was not going to his own local show.
Because, he said, he'd only gotten back from Iraq about two months ago. They still sounded like bombs and mortars.
Let that sink in. A soldier wouldn't/couldn't go to the show that was ostensibly for him and his comrades and those before him, because it sounded too much like where he'd been.
Enjoy your fireworks. Maybe someday tradition will dictate donating several hundred dollars (the cost of my local fireworks show, your funding my vary) to veteran's charities for Independence Day.
As for DJ, he was re-deployed last spring. He hasn't logged in since. I can only hope that it's because he quit the game. It'd be happier than any other reason.
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