We call this a “miss” in Florida:
Just a wee bit of rain (OK, dumping buckets, our neighbors’ dock is underwater and with a few more inches so is our lawn).
GrasstopsUSA.com is worried: “Alert: GOP May Capitulate on Drill Here, Drill Now – what? Can’t we count on them to even keep their stupidest promises?
What’s going on in your worlds?
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In the first week of April, 2008, we had a small family get together at my brother Brad’s house in Key West, Florida. Donna and I and our kids, Brad and and his wife Jen, my mom and her husband Karl Lutze. It so happened that the fortieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination occurred that week, and Brad and I spent the night watching Senator Obama’s “More Perfect Union” speech on my laptop on his porch. Both children of the sixties – Brad born while JFK was president, me born while Bobby and Martin Luther led our nation towards a better future – the anniversary and the thoughtful speech of Senator Obama struck us as a moment to reflect on the period our lives had spanned.
Moreover, it gave us reason to ponder the period that Karl’s life has spanned.
Karl was in Selma, Alabama and walked across a bridge. That was not the beginning of Karl’s involvement in civil rights, just one of the things he had been doing for twenty years by that time to create the world that we live in now.
The Washington Post is reporting today that the McCain campaign is going against the rules of the Fairfax VA school district by holding a political rally at a highschool during the school day.
Political expediency once again trumps social concerns, community rules and child welfare for the McCain campaign.
Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are holding a campaign rally at Fairfax High School tomorrow morning in violation of a school system policy, prompting some teachers and community leaders to question district officials.
KTVA Alaska reports that “Not all Alaskans believe Palin’s speech is accurate”. This from the very people who would know the difference.
Please use this information to tell the country the truth.
Gov. Sarah Palin had recently promised to co-operate fully with the investigation into her alleged abuse of power. The memo must not have reached her staff, her executive powers must not be all that effective, or, more likely, the McCain campaign legal team trying to quash the investigation must be in control now.
This piece Alaskan news just prior to Gov. Palin as the GOP VP nominee, after a recorded phone call showing her staff using the Governor’s office for Palin’s personal purposes was released to the public. KTVA reporst that Gov. Palin reversed course this day on her original denial of any abuse of power:
I had the pleasure of volunteering at a Joe Biden event last night here in Sarasota. In Booker Highschool’s gymnasium (the school Syesha attended, for you Idol fans), a standing-room only crowd gathered. My team of folks helped the elderly and disabled in and took care of them, two elderly ladies had a hard time with the heat and it was my honor to walk them into the gym and fuss over them with water and attention.
Senator Biden showed up just about on time, not bad for having done three previous events yesterday. He gave a twenty minute speech that was very well delivered and very well received, followed by an hour of question and answer.
You have all read the diary about the note written by Anne K in Alaska, or seen other articles about it. Anne lives in Wassilla, has known Sarah Palin for many years and has an experienced opinion of Gov. Palin’s history that she wanted to share. She had asked that her thoughts be forwarded with her name attached – she did not want to hide from the responsibility of speaking her mind – though she asked that they not be posted on websites: “there are too many kooks out there…” (you know who you are… ;~).
Somewhere along the way someone posted the email in its entirety as a comment on the Washington Independent. Since that moment, articles and diaries have popped up all over the web (and here’s another: curious critters, ain’t we?).
There has been discussion about this comment, some of it along the lines of: “Gee, I dunno, I think this may not be real…” So instead of just bantering about the veracity of Anne’s words amongst those of us who were reading them second and fifth-hand, I decided to give Anne a call.
Gov. Palin is a prominent member of Feminists For Life, a fundamentalist group advocating prison for doctors who perform abortions under any circumstances. FFL also opposes birth control, even for married couples.
Nice slogan, eh? “*Refuse to Choose*”
(FFL states that it does not endorse politicians, despite the banner on their homepage endorsing Gov. Palin for Vice President.)
Q&A with Palin on the issues in July 2006
Palin and “Femistists for Life” oppose Birth Control
The problem is that FFL doesn’t just oppose abortion. FFL wants abortion to be illegal. All abortions, period, including those for rape, incest, health, major fetal defects and, although Foster resisted admitting this, even some abortions most doctors would say were necessary to save the woman’s life. (Although FFL is not a Catholic organization, its rejection of therapeutic abortion follows Catholic doctrine.) FFL wants doctors who perform abortions to be punished, possibly with prison terms.
It was extremely difficult to get Foster to say what she thought would happen if abortion was banned. At one point she would not concede that women would continue to have abortions if it was recriminalized; at another she argued that criminalization was no big deal: Instructions on self-abortion were posted on the Internet. I had to work to get her to admit that illegal abortion was common before Roe, and that it was dangerous–numbers on abortion deaths were concocted by pre-Roe legalization advocates, she told me. Yet the FFL website prominently features gory stories of abortion mishaps and discredited claims that abortion causes breast cancer. (Challenged on the cancer connection, Foster says they just want women to have medical information. Asked why they don’t then link to the 2004 Lancet article debunking their cancer claims, she says they are not medical experts and have considered taking the cancer pages down.) So legal abortion is dangerous but illegal abortion would be safe? When I pointed out that in countries where the operation is banned, such as Brazil and Peru, rates are sky-high and abortion a major cause of injury and death, she professed ignorance.
I got similarly evasive answers when I asked why FFL didn’t promote birth control, and when I asked if FFL considered the pill an “abortifacient.” She did tell me that “birth control doesn’t work” for swing-shift nurses because they lose track of their body clock–interesting, if true–or for teenagers, which I know to be false.
Palin visits D.C., lobbies for Alaska issues Feb 25, 2008