New blog going

The Progressive Homemakers Blog.

If this is a place for my personal yowlings, that is a place for discussion. Come on over for tea and cookies.

Disconnect v.1.0

photo © Adrian van Leen for openphoto.net CC:PublicDomain

Like a ripple in a pond, the troopergate scandal gave birth to the sexual harassment scandal, which was just a blip on the megamedia radar screen. Troopergate looks at whether Palin fired a state commissioner for not firing a state trooper, who coincidentally was divorcing her sister. Palin replaced the fired state commissioner with a fellow fundie who was officially reprimanded for sexual harassment. While the national media went on vacation, Alaska media wanted to know why she appointed a known sexual harasser.

(snip)

On July 25th, Kopp announced his resignation at a press conference with Palin and both indicated that he had been smeared. Kopp stated that while he has been "portrayed in a negative light," his "personal worth was found in the person of Jesus Christ."

"I'm A Christian, I've been Saved! I know I've been Saved, I've been saying it for years now! God gave me a pass on any and every sin I commit and law I break when I was Saved. Once Saved, Always Saved. Why are you acting like I've done something wrong, I've been forgiven!

It's not like I have to be a good person or follow any rules or anything, that's works and we're not supposed to do works, we're supposed to let God take care of it all. I gave God the responsibility when He Saved me, he's responsible for all my actions, I'm not. Taking responsibility is works! I'm just a sinner, after all. Just go look at Him, he's covering me, I'm as worthy as He is!"

Ahem.

Yes, those of us out here in the secular, reality based community hold individuals responsible for their actions, not mythic deities. Sorry if this came as a shock.

Read the compendium these quotes came from, and more about Troopergate and Harrassergate here on The DailyKos.

Evil

Photo taken from www.locationworks.com

Remember what I said about Liberals considering intelligence a virtue and not a sign of elitism?

According to the New York Times:

“Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.

(Note: Ms. Kilkenny's identity and opinion have been confirmed by Snopes)

Now that is evil.

So, with no further ado, here are a list of the most popular banned books in the US. No, we don't know that this is the list Gov. Palin wanted banned from the library, but the best odds say that the ones she wanted out are on this list somewhere.

I know the husband and I will be hitting the bookshops in town over the next few months, to make sure the ones we choose to make available to our children are in our home library, just in case.

(Note: List courtesy of Adler & Robin Books)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

The sum of the hypocrisy

photo © Adrian van Leen for openphoto.net CC:PublicDomain

While many pundits have wondered whether social conservatives will recoil from the news that Palin's 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant, they're clearly not grasping the mores of that community. If Bristol Palin were the daughter of Democratic parents, she would undoubtedly be held up as an example of the failures of a liberal, permissive culture. Instead, she is viewed — as are the majority of teenage mothers in Evangelical churches — as a Christian who sinned, is forgiven, and needs to be embraced and supported.

- Amy Sullivan for Time Magazine, Are Evangelicals Really Sold on Palin

Viewing a teen mother as someone who is forgiven, and needs to be embraced and supported is sending the message that teen sex is acceptable, and that teen sex pregnancy will earn you many rewards, like being able to get out of school, all those gifts, job offers, the chance to move away from your parents, and of course, being able to get married and have more sex. All the while Grandma and the other church ladies will take care of that little bundle of annoyance for you. And of course, God doesn't mind, you're forgiven.

Saying that you are against teen sex, and for abstinence, while publicly embracing and supporting teen mothers is hypocrisy, plan and simple.

Liberals view teen pregnancy as a horribly stupid mistake. That sends the message that teen sex is a choice that must be made with care and responsibility. Because having to leave school ruins your future, and YOU are responsible for taking care of that baby and getting that job. YOU were stupid and didn't use birth control, or didn't try something else. And YOU will have to live with the consequences for a long, long time.

Because of that, liberal parents tend to give their children ALL the information they need to make careful, responsible choices. Because we don't want them making mistakes based on ignorance. We expect them to be intelligent (we do not consider intelligence to be elitist) and so we give them knowledge.

Which is the way it used to work in this country. Back in those good ol' days.

Hypocrisy. Plain and simple.

Now if y'all want to continue to encourage your daughters to be sluts and your boys to act like rutting bulls, go right ahead. Tell them God has the responsibility for the sexuality, show them that they will get rewarded for their bastard offspring, and then step back and allow the heat cycles to begin, just like any other dumb animal. Do what you want, I won't even look.

But don't you cut off the choices for me and my family, don't you dare. You do not have that right. Even if you believe that God sees birth control as murder it is not up to you to answer to God for me.

Back off.

To sum up

Your oxymoron is showing

The Republican party keeps harping on Senator Obama and the Democratic party as the party of celebrities and elites.

Ahem

From www.m-w.com

oxymoron

Main Entry:

ox·y·mo·ron

Pronunciation:

\ˌäk-sē-ˈmȯr-ˌän\

Function:

noun

Inflected Form(s):

plural ox·y·mo·rons also ox·y·mo·ra \-ˈmȯr-ə\

Etymology:

Late Greek oxymōron, from neuter of oxymōros pointedly foolish, from Greek oxys sharp, keen + mōros foolish

Date:

1657

: a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (as cruel kindness); broadly : something (as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements

All of the following taken from www.wikipedia.com and www.youtube.com

Fred Gandy
Republican
US House of Representatives

January 3, 1987 – January 3, 1995


"If there were no Gopher, there would be no Fred Grandy for Congress."

-----

Sonny Bono
Republican
US House of Representatives
January 3, 1995 – January 5, 1998




-----

Fred Thompson
Republican
US Senator
December 2, 1994 – January 3, 2003



This is the closest he ever came to being in the military BTW

----

Arnold Schwarzenegger
Republican
Governor of California
Incumbent



----

Ronald Regan
Republican
President
January 20, 1981 – January 20, 1989



----

Did I miss anyone?

I couldn't find an actor who ran on the Democratic ticket. I may have missed one, but I don't think so.

Morality

photo © Simone Cortesi for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike

Boston Globe

The death of a taboo
Posted by Sasha Issenberg September 4, 2008 08:41 PM

ST. PAUL -- One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context, died today. It was nearly seven years old.

The informal prohibition, which had been occasionally threatened by political ads in recent years, was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers' subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.

The September 11 precedent was one of the few surviving campaign-season taboos. It is survived by direct comparisons of one's opponents to Hitler.

Words fail. Words just fail.

Exploiting death for political gain. From the party of morally and family values.

I thought I would be more surprised.

Oh, and don't forget the fake military funeral. $5k at Getty Images.

A veteran’s advocate said that with soldiers still deployed and in harm’s way, there is an obligation not to sugar coat reality.

“What it does reveal is a serious lack of understanding and a lack of personal connection to the military,” said Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Rieckhoff, who is at the convention with a contingent of veterans added that a video tribute to Medal of Honor winner Michael Monsoor, a Navy Seal killed in Iraq, shown on Tuesday night, used combat video that appeared to him and several other veterans of the Iraq war to have been staged.

After a Web search of videos played at the Democratic National Convention last week, CBS News found no obvious use of stock footage.

The RNC did not respond to CBS News’ request for a comment.

Seems they like to exploit the death of others all around.

Things to think about

A young girl reading by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

The ironies continue to roll on. Feminists question how a VP can balance work and family while conservatives shut their eyes and continue to cheer for what they've opposed for generations. We can only sit here and shake our heads....
- Jeannie Chancey

And it's the feminist/liberal/progressives who are saying that you shouldn't air your children's dirty linen in public.

And it's the feminist/liberal/progressives who are saying that young people should be taught how to not get knocked up in high school.

And it's the feminist/liberal/progressives who are saying that maybe the baby should come before the mother's career.

And it's the feminist/liberal/progressives who are saying that the decisions on how to best deal with issues like these should be made by the family, not by the government.

You might want to think on all that....

This makes no sense

If you didn't want the pregnancy to be the center of attention, why oh why oh why oh why oh why did you invite the baby daddy to the convention?

Bristol's Boyfriend to Join Palins at RNC

By RACHEL D'ORO

AP

posted: 10 HOURS 33 MINUTES AGO

WASILLA, Alaska (Sept. 2) - The boyfriend of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's unwed, pregnant daughter will join the family of the Republican vice presidential candidate at the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Levi Johnston's mother said her 18-year-old son left Alaska on Tuesday morning to join the Palin family at the convention where Sen. John McCain will officially receive the Republican nomination for president.

(snip)

The young man's presence could set off a media frenzy around the young couple as photographers and cameramen scramble for pictures of the two teenagers.

This is why, if you wanted them left alone, you leave them out of the spotlight. Actions have consequences. You get knocked up, you don't get to go to Mommy's convention. Simple

On Monday, Palin and her husband, Todd, said their 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, planned to have the baby and wed a young man identified only as Levi. The family asked the media to respect the young couple's privacy as has been the tradition with children of candidates.

Sarah Palin is scheduled to address the convention Wednesday night and traditionally her family would join her at the conclusion of her speech.

(snip)

He's not family yet. He's not family until after the wedding.

Levi Johnston, a high school hockey player for Wasilla High School, is not listed on the team roster for 2008-2009, and his mother wouldn't say if he graduated. She said simply he's no longer a student and any further information would have to come from him.

You know, once upon a time getting knocked up and having to marry the high school dropout daddy was considered shameful in this country. What happened?

And don't blame the Democrats. Republicans have affairs too. But at least Democrats raise their children right.

(found on AOL news)

Here we go again - part 3

photo © Anindya Chowdhury for openphoto.net CC:NonCommercial

I wasn't going to say any more. I really wasn't going to say any more. I was just going to spend the day doing my laundry in peace.

And then this:

( Taken from The AmericaBlog)

1. Sarah Palin's first son, Track Palin, was born in April 1989 (we don't have the exact day). Actually now we do, courtesy of FOX News' Alan Colmes. He was born on April 20. For the purposes of this analysis, we will give Sarah Palin the benefit of the doubt and assume that her son was born on April 30, 1989, the longest possible April date from her marriage.

2. Sarah Palin was married on August 29, 1988. She eloped.

3. 38 weeks is the typical human pregnancy.

4. 38 weeks before her son's birthday, April 20, 1989, is July 28, 1988 - i.e., that would be the hypothetical day of conception.

5. If this data is correct, that would mean that Sarah Palin eloped four weeks after her son's conception.

6. Sarah Palin's son could still be legitimate if he was born four weeks premature, AND if he was conceived on the night his parents eloped.

Sigh. Someone please start teaching these people about the birds and the bees. They're making us all look bad.