You are absolutely right and I enjoyed reading your article.  Sarah Palin, blinded by her ambitious and opportunistic ego, is unable to see that she is being used as a political tool.  I would be very fearful of what else this woman might play right into on an international level.  There is no comparison to Hillary.  Hillary would first of all recognize that she is being used, and secondly, would never succumb to it.  Palin is a disgrace to many of us (women) who have fought hard to be treated with equality.  The McCain camp says they will bring change, but they are utilizing the same "Bush" tactics in their current fight for the White House.  Also, as a woman, my perception of Palin is that she is a social/political climber who puts her family second next to her political life.  Palin comes first, with great disregard for her children and husband.  There is much more to Palin than meets the eye.  I think the Repubs eagerly accepted this woman because she is their only hope to win this election and she talks a good game.  I hope Obama and Biden bury her!  Bye the way, McCain was anialated on The View the other day....so deserving!  Cheers to the ladies on The View!

by Viki (2 articles, 16 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 73 comments [3 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 7:55:09 AM

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If John McCain were to drop out of the race (for health reasons, etc.) would Sarah Palin be at the top of the ticket?

After all, it should be the same either before Nov 4th or after January 20th.

Would you vote for her?

by Richard Oakley (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 9:12:58 AM

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Comment from Ratings:   Not all feminists are pro choice extreme leftist liberals. There are different types of feminism and to say that Sarah Palin's beliefs make her any less a feminist is an insult to me as a woman and a feminist. Not all women who grew up in the 60's and 70's during the women's movement(s) subscribe to the anti male, pro abortion stance that one type of feminist takes. A great many of us are strong, family oriented, pro life feminists who feel that feminism has gone too far in the name of protecting women's rights. When it began feminism was about equal rights, however, it has been turned into a fight for women's rights above all others. You don't speak for me or many of my feminist friends at all.

by Jan Brown (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 9:33:20 AM

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I believe the choice of Governor Palin says as much about the American electorate as it does about the McCain election campaign and it isn't positive.

by Archie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1761 comments [112 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 11:02:49 AM

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''subscribe to the anti male, pro abortion stance that one type of feminist takes. A great many of us are strong, family oriented, pro life feminists who feel that feminism has gone too far in the name of protecting women's rights.''

You don't seem to be aware that the very definition of the word ""feminism''is: furthering women's rights so that women have the same rights and same opportunities that men enjoy. At the core of the notion of feminism is the notion of progress, improvement, moving ahead, branching out,  getting better salaries, more choices, more power--not less.

By saying that ''feminism has gone too far'', you are infering that women should go backwards, settle for less and give up rights and opportunities they have  conquered recently. This is the very definition of anti feminist backlash--in the eyes of any well informed and thinking person that is.

It's typical that you don't realize how nonsensical your statement really is. Would you expect to convince anybody if you said: ''I am strongly antiracist but I believe that blacks have gone too far?''Hello!!!

Being a woman of power and even calling oneself feminist is no proof that you are a feminist. Thatcher is a good example, who implemented policies that set women backwards in her country. Far from being a feminist, Sarah Palin is at best an American Margaret Thatcher, without the smarts, the clipped English and the political acumen.

Nowadays, when reactionnary old white males want to sell reactionnary policies, they send young ex beauty queens to do the job. Too bad Anna Nicole Smith is dead, she would have been perfect on the Republican ticket.

by francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 385 comments) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 11:54:20 AM

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You are insulting Palin by stating she was only chosen for her chromosomes.  There are some fairly evident other reasons.

- She bolsters McCain's claim to be a maverick since she took on (successfully) the incumbent governor of her own party, partly on the basis that the governor was too beholden to the oil companies.

- She proved her political skill by following up the defeat of the incumbent governor with the defeat of a popular former governor in the general election, and after almost 2 years in office has an 80% popularity rating.

- She appeals to key demographics like white women and the white working class.  She has combined family and position.  She is a small-town girl who needed to win a beauty contest in order to be able to afford to go to university.  She went to a little known university.  She and her husband hunt and fish, not like Cheney as a rich person's sport, but for food and income.  Her husband is a genuine blue collar worker with a union card, as well as a commercial fisherman and a champion snowmobile racer.  None of these facts qualify one for high office, but they do mean she is the only candidate on either ticket that key constituencies can readily identify with.

- One of her main claims (and this claim is actually true) to real achievement is raising the windfall profits tax on oil companies, not your typical Republican achievement and something that can appeal to ordinary Americans.

I understand objecting to much of her politics.  But the manifold reasons for the selection have been demonstrated by the huge crowds of mostly working women showing up at the Palin-McCain campaign stops chanting Sa-rah! Sa-rah! and virtually swooning over her while generally not bothering to even listen to McCain.

So far, McCain's selection seems to be proving to work for him.  That could change, but the charge that she was chosen solely because she is a woman just doesn't hold any water.

by Bill Samuel (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 448 comments [15 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 2:07:03 PM

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No sale, Bill. It is all about her gender---McCain was in deep do do and they knew it. Obama had driven change like a stake in the Reps heart, so guess what, we will get a WOMAN. But, I have no problem with that----if they had picked a woman Like Sen. Snow or even Huttchison but they got someone that is totally unqualified. I wonder if the pro life position got ya? I notice that you did not mention that.

by virginius "gin" arnold (18 articles, 7 quicklinks, 47 diaries, 516 comments [22 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 8:52:04 PM

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I'm entirely anti-Palin for VP or President, but something I wish other Pro-Choice writers would remember is that when a woman is facing a pregnancy, she doesn't just want the right to choose abortion... she wants the right to make a CHOICE.

Bristol Palin realistically had zero choice in her "decision" to carry her pregnancy to term, although she fortunately had the theoretical right to choose other options. 

IMO, it's not whether or not a woman chooses to abort that's important, it's whether or not a woman has the right to actually *choose* what to do, including carry her pregnancy to term. Children born today exist because their mothers had a choice about whether or not to give birth. Women in Palin's ideal universe would have no such choice and their children would have no such assurance.

by Theresa "Darklady" Reed (16 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 33 comments [9 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 3:10:13 PM

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I find it disturbing that we allow cow "fetuses" to be transplanted into other cows -- and have been doing so for over 5 decades.  Yet that same option is not a HUMAN choice. (cows are used as a human model for many medical research projects so adapting the procedure to humans is not that difficult)

Pro-Choice or Pro-Life, I don't understand why this option hasn't been pushed by both group.  Both groups could offer this as an option and as a bonified insurance item.

That neither group does, leaves me wondering about what the issues really are.

As for Ms P, I don't think I would expect her to be particularly concerned abut poverty, injustice, or humanity.  I deal with children from families whose mothers have no opportunity to be soccer mom's because they work 2 and 3 jobs to make ends meet. 

These same mothers have to choose what to do when their oldest children reach 12th grade because the youngest are citizens but their oldest are illegals with no future here  -- where are our family values when we tear families apart???Is that a feminist issue???

I don't know, but my gut is spasming over what the Republicans consider proper values for the US. . .

So I have little empathy for the right or wrong interpretation of feminist.

by sometimes blinded (4 articles, 110 quicklinks, 15 diaries, 624 comments [53 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 6:24:28 PM

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Comment from Ratings:   As a male, I am right there with you. That was the first thing I said when Palin was selected, another Karl Rove move. IT IS an insult to women and her whinny voice grates on me. Mcsame could have chosen Snow, who regardless of her party, she is a smart and experienced Senator. I wonder if she turned them down.

by virginius "gin" arnold (18 articles, 7 quicklinks, 47 diaries, 516 comments [22 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 5:06:15 PM

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The Jews and the Frat boys are becoming obvious.

by John Hanks (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1763 comments [39 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 at 5:37:41 PM

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 What a funny little word rape is. In 1970 I was raped. It was a particularly ugly affair. I was a virgin, sheltered and naive'. I had no idea what had happened. I had blacked out and then blocked out the entire event. I withdrew into myself. And then I discovered that I was pregnant. There was no denying it. (Years later a therapist would determine that I was a high functioning autistic and that the event had left me permanently mentally damaged. I was shut in a room in my mind where there was no feeling and no emotion and that would not bode well for my son whom I was forced to carry to term because there was no such thing as abortion.) I would eventually learn to channel my feelings to animals and I would take greater comfort in their companionship and penchant for healing for the rest of my life.

With the awareness of my pregnancy the entire rape came crashing back on me. There was no option. My family was not well off but my parents were very good about it. For me-the conflict of having to be reminded everyday by the pregnancy alone was enough. There was "giving the baby up for adoption." We just couldn't do that. After he was born I became horribly depressed, suicidal and emotionally blank  I did put him up for adoption. Then, tormented by that- I carried the guilt for many years. I could not bear to bring him into the swirling tumult that was my own private nightmare. He had done nothing to deserve it. But neither had I. Nor had my mother or father who could barely contain their tears whenever they looked at me and for a great long time we never talked about it. A silent scar hung like a pall over all of us.

When I saw this woman Palin come galloping in I immediately knew something evil had stepped onto the world stage. This woman presumes to know for all women what they think and feel and presumes to comprehend  how they would react if their choices were taken from them.

 One thing I did get from all this was fierce independence.  My body is my body and no old man in Washington or arrogant political figure masquerading as a woman is going to tell me what to do with it.  What a sanctimonious creature this Palin is.  One moment she speaks of pro-life and the next she boasts of murdering animals en masse. She would set women back a hundred years with her misguided arrogance. Any woman who does not subscribe to her brand of "feminism" should see to it that she never has the opportunity to take women's rights from them under any circumstances.

The GOP and their so-called right to lifers have set her on all of us. These people that go on about right to life -are they going to be there to take the children of these rape victims when they can't go any further with the motherhood that has been forced on them? They have the audacity to bandy about their theocratic rulings and then walk away without realizing nor, I believe, caring what results from them. They would inflict that on all of us if they could, without giving any thought whatsoever to the repercussions that could arise from such cold, calculating and tectonic determinations.

by Raffie Azariel (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 61 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 14, 2008 at 12:18:30 AM

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I don't see much evidence that Palin has any great desire to push her personal social views on the country. She certainly didn't on Alaska, although it's hard to say had there not been the need for Democrat votes on energy and reform legislation. But this is not anything a vice-president, or even a president has much say-so on. Even a solidly right-wing supreme court could only give the decision on abortion back to the states. And few, if any, would be likely to come anywhere near Palin's personal views on rape and incest, much less outlaw abortion in normal circumstances. I think the extent of her ambitions on this are to simply set an example, and perhaps to try to change people's hearts on the matter of abortion. That she might actually be effective in this regard is I think what's really at the root of her opponent's discontent, not any genuine concern that she is going to personally do anything to outlaw abortion.

by Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 858 comments) on Sunday, Sep 14, 2008 at 6:05:05 AM

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I was taken by the similarities between the news pictures of the caring Governor Palin with her rifle and her dead moose and the ex KGB agent and now Prime Minister of Russia, Putin with his rifle and his sedated tiger. Just juxtapose these two events. Palin goes out with real bullets to kill, just as she has no problem killing humans with war, and bags a huge creature of the forest, for food? I don't think so more likely for the joy of killing. Putin, on the other hand goes out with sedative darts in his rifle and sedates a tiger thereby saving the lives of two media crew members who were themselves about to become tiger food. Now you might believe in "feminism" but tell me don't you think that's going a little far, I mean trying to out do the ex KGB monster in killing?

by Archie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1761 comments [112 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 14, 2008 at 4:02:33 PM

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The real insult to women comes from the left.  Somehow, if you're not pro-abortion, you must be anti-woman -- even if you are a woman.  It's insulting to all of our gender to be lumped into one thought group.  Some women love pre-born babies -- some could care less about sucking 'em into a sink.  Some women like to shoot guns -- some women would prefer to be an unarmed victim (that's where your "rape led to pregnancy" scenario comes into play -- maybe if you'd carry a gun you wouldn't get raped in the first place).  But remember, we're not all the same, and it's insulting that the left thinks we should be.

by shielah jones (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 94 comments [8 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Sep 18, 2008 at 10:22:07 AM

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