Palin on Contraception

Another Palin article...

Good thing she's not Catholic. Otherwise the church hierarchy would have to ask her in for a sit down and/or deny her communion -- assuming they were consistent.

David, I think "loathsome" is a pretty strong word. . . but perhaps it's the right one. Lying, making attacks, then ducking into hiding while others run interference for you is indeed loathsome. She has to come out sometime...

There are very few mainstream American politicians who elicit this strong a negative reaction from me. Dick Cheney, for example, doesn't. Nor does Mitt Romney (who my dad absolutely detests). George W. Bush probably does at this point, but that's purely via sheer accumulation of damage. And aside from him? Tom DeLay is the paradigm case. And I really have trouble thinking of anyone else.

schraubd, would you consider Alberto Gonzalez a politician? Sadly, he really shouldn't be. But in the same way DeLay is the embodiment of ruthless power politics gone too far, Gonzalez is the embodiment of cronyism combined with incompetence gone completely off the rails. And the latter is far more scary, at least to me.

It might be worth noting at this juncture that one of the problems I have with the notion of electing McCain president is that whole cronyism/incompetence thing. One of the worst parts about the Bush administration is that they have managed to put ideologues in career positions. The problems with the DoJ in that regard are obvious. but the problem is not limited to the DoJ. There are similar problems in the State Dept, the DoE, the DoD, the NIH, the FDA, FEMA, the Interior Dept... Some are worse than others, but I think it's safe to say the problem has become insipid. And looking at the kinds of people McCain surrounds himself with, along with his nature to consider certain things to the virtual exclusion of others, along with his temperament, along with his admitted disinclination to spend a lot of time on decisions, along with with acknowledged proclivity for taking high stakes gambles, I'm not sure he's such a hot choice. To me, that's not change we can believe in, that's rearranging the deck chairs.

I read the link where she said she would allow teaching condoms as well as abstinence, presumably as a backup plan to abstinence. She would not allow teaching anything "explicit", however. Now how exactly do you teach about condoms effectively if you can't explain just how early you have to put one on, but not too early, how it goes on, what it means if it breaks, ...?

I just don't see that Governor Palin thinks her positions through. What is the principle here? I appreciate that she would go a little farther than her pastor would, but is that all it is, to be a little open-minded, but not too much? Is it to add just a little pragmatism to being utterly authoritarian? That doesn't sound attractive to me.