Do you plan to object next time right-wingers launch personal attacks on a Democrats' family

or personal life?

If so, then unless you listen to what Obama has to say about Palin's daughter's pregnancy, and do what he asks, and condemn those who don't, you're a hypocrite.

:rofl:

:D

I've seen plenty attack the republican VP nominee, however.

Your candidate has said, "off limits".

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Couldn't be more obvious.

:wtf:

Why are you here?

of the baby, is an attack on her.

At first I thought this story should die. These facts have changed my thinking.

Palin started her veep candidacy with a bald-faced lie about her actions concerning the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere." She lied about her involvement in an attempt to settle a family score by getting a state trooper fired. If she also lied about her pregnancy, what does that make her?

Answer: A liar.

If the story of little Trig turns out to have been an elaborate lie then the story is about Sarah Palin, not her daughter. As a minor, her daughter would have had no say in the matter. Bristol is a side note at best, a victim at worst. Palin made statements in public and on the record about her recent pregnancy, including a time line. It is far from off-limits.

And then lied to cover it up?

Boy, you must not have been looking hard...

Rec.

is the fact that this woman has been either deceiving people or hiding the pregnancy or whatever. And now it appears that assumption was correct. Just like the fact that now it has come out about her husband's DUI. You are talking about a woman who supposedly could be the next VP. wouldn't you like to know if she was honest or not. There appear to be a lot of murky details in her life.

If she had been vetted properly this wouldn't have happened probably.

That's an extremely offensive, baseless, contemptible attack on Bristol (not just Sarah).

Her mother drags her out into public life to be humiliated and YOU blame Democrats?!

Oh the drama... "you hypocrite" :rofl: whatfuckingever, R.

Below-the-belt unethical personal attacks on a candidate's children are arguably Rovian.

Suggesting that objecting to them is is just ludicrous, and gives Rove too much credit for ethics.

:)

I could care less about her daughter, other than I feel sorry for her being 17 and stuck with the responsibility of her parents' child and one on the way as well. And I blame that more on the First Dude because he isn't stepping up to his responsibilities.

(sorry Mods, someone may "alert" because this is my opinion)

If we don't stick to the issues we are sunk.

to come clean about her family and personal life is "attacking"? I mean, she's the one who introduced herself as an uber-mommy to the public--I can't see what kind of mommy she is? I get to hear her BS about herself, her sales pitch, but I can't hear the truth? Really now--I'm just supposed to buy her holy Hockey Mom gloriousness, without knowing how potentially messed-up and out of control her family might be? I am so tired of this righteous-indignation shit. This is why we LOSE.

It's silly to pretend otherwise.

and whining about it only makes Dems look simpering and weak.

Politics has a dirty business- if you don't like how it's played, then stay out of it.

Quite apart from the ethics, any attack that *mentions* Bristol's name is likely to help McCain more than Obama.

n/t

they would have said Bill was the father!

It's about that fact that she's going to try to legislate how she lives it & force it on us. Her family has become the proof that her abstinance only views have failed. Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?

Who are you talking to? Because personally I haven't said a thing about the pregnancy issues.

Personally, I think its a non-issue and distracting from the real scandals.....the AIP membership and troopergate. I'd prefer those were the leads and hopefully they'll become the more prominent questions about Palin. Because those are legit.

It'll go like this:

O Donald Ian Rankin
--kindest man from across the sea
He couldn't stand a heavy hand
Should fall on housefly, worm, nor flea
Nor would he 'llow a man to hit
E'en a tormentor, should he split
And loose his iron chains a glance
And thereby spot the random chance
For Donald Ian Rankin
--had a soul so sweet as honey
And did recoil at all tin foil
Should it draw a tear from far or near
Yes his soul was tender as a newborn deer
So big at heart was Donald Ian Rankin
--kind and gentle, a grandmother's kiss
On an evening after the rains
So whistle blew, he joined the fray
But threw his bloomin' gun away
And marched with arms wide open, yea!
For though the shrapnel flew like flies
The bullets danced around his eyes
But all he saw were lemonades
On shiny beach days Bristol ways
The girls adorned in tight brocades
And not the blood and steely blades
O Donald Ian Rankin marched
--across the Salient, neither hunched nor arched
Because he had a secret plan
To offer his most kindly hand
If he could make it through the stench
And meet the Bosch in yonder trench
with fear and hatred lately dug
He hoped to advance to a hug
'Twould light the world for all to face
O Donald Ian's warm embrace
--of any random Bosch he found
and song would ring out all around
They'd hear it back in Blighty, too
And in Berlin, and Timbuktu
And all these troubles then undone
Be kind! he thought, and made his run
O Donald Ian Rankin smiled
With arms wide open all the while
He made it all a quarter mile
His opposite, indifferent
Just aimed and fired,
And down he went

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno." John McCain 1998

A TWO-fer: lesbians and children

Unless the answer is "yes", if you try to defend the (far more offensive) attacks on Bristol Palin then you're a hypocrite.

That's not the point. The point is that it happened, and it happens.

Wishing otherwise is like railing against the law of gravity.

"I said - UP, dammit!"

I didn't say anything about attacking anyone, I was only pointing out a FACT about John McCain.

And I haven't made any posts regarding any of the Palin baby threads.

So, back off

IS a difference. We are only pointing out a COVERUP AND lack of judgment on both McCain's and Palin's parts.

What else COULD Obama say?

Welcome to politics!

So be it, then.

Call me 'inconsistent'.

This all sounds new to you?

:eyes:

I've seen a couple of things a bit like it from the right - I seem to recall that when Al Gore's son had some legal trouble some conservatives behaved a bit like this, although possibly not to the same extent - but not from the left before.

For her doing nothing more than being alive?!

Oh, c'mon!

A throwaway oneliner about Chelsea's looks is not in the same league as a concerted attempt to allege tht Bristol is Trig's mother, or as making political fodder out of her pregnancy - which is not to say it wasn't a gross breach of political ethics and utterly contemptible, just that the other is even more so.

I unambiguously condemn both. You condemn the one; are you also willing to condemn the other?

Sheesh.

Isn't the whole point of the battle to bring something *different* from the Republicans and the Right generally?

It's not even just a matter of 'next time they'll do it to the Democrats'. It's a matter of contributing to a culture where girls and women are attacked and stigmatized over matters concerning their sexuality.

Would it be acceptable to wage a campaign against a candidate on the grounds that a family member was gay? It's not just the effect on the candidate or even the family member; it's contributing to overall homophobia. What about when Bush supporters smeared McCain over his supposed 'black illegitimate child' - it wasn't just bad because it was nasty to his adopted daughter, but because it fed into racism. Would it be acceptable, now that McCain is the enemy, to revive these rumours in the hope of beating him? There are limits to what one can do to the enemy before before one starts becoming Rovian and right-wing oneself. Also, it's likely to be counterproductive in electoral terms, and Obama obviously thinks so.

I think it would have been better for a candidate, male or female, not to run for VP - and especially not to combine it with continuing to govern a state so geographically far away from most of the campaigning - when there are so many family issues going on. But she *did* choose to, and her kids should not be punished for it. Yes, what is said on a message-board is not that crucial on its own, but evidently it's feeding in to the media.

JMO.

and her IGNORANT, ANTI-WOMAN political views which the MOTHER would like to IMPOSE on the entire NATION.

Her DAUGHTER is now a BLATANT MANIFESTATION of the UTTER MORAL and PRACTICAL BANKRUPTCY of said views. And as such, she has forced her MOTHER and her mother's IGNORANT supporters into twisted-logic, lying, hypocritical expressions of "pride" and "acceptance".

I've seen people say that she doesn't deserve sympathy if attacked, as she chose to risk the pregnancy when her mother is in the political spotlight.

I've seen ugly speculations about who the father is.

It's fine to point out the obvious fact that this demonstrates the failure of abstinence-only education and that banning birth control leads not to abstinence but to unwanted pregnancy. What makes me uncomfortable is when it's treated as a big tabloid-y scandal.

to attack, who needs to go after her family??

I don't think anyone *needs* to, but an awful lot of people are anyway.

Don't shove your abstinence-only, theocratic politics down our throats when your own family life is filled with the kind of typical human behavior your politics implicitly scorn and deny. Her daughter's pregnancy is an obvious political issue. Wake up.

I hope you don't actually think that.

Ever since 9/11 I have been reading on nutjob blogs comments about how people will be able to sleep at night if we put all Arabs in internment camps and launch nukes at Iran.

Those are the kind of people we are dealing with.

They are flirting with armageddon.

I appreciate your noble sentiments, but this is not the time for nicey-nice.

There are two good reasons for not doing so.

1) it's immoral
2) it's counterproductive.

parent's STATED POLITICAL VIEWS.
A bigot? A greed-head? Maybe a war-mongering teen? A church poor-box thief?

Quid pro quo, not quid pro whateveryouwanttopickon.

Barack Obama was right, and most of DU is wrong - bringing a candidate's children into the debate is wrong. Not "wrong unless..."; wrong.

The question is not "do Republicans do it" but "are Republicans right to do it".

Oh shit no it hasn't.

What about her support for a near-fascist (Buchanan) and for the explicitly anti-American Alaska Independence Party? There doesn't seem to be too much in the media on these. I can just imagine if a Democrat chose a running-mate who had given support for extremist left-wing parties!

In the past we played by some god awful rules that some things are "out of bounds". While the enemy keeps winning by crossing any line of civility. So if you keep doing what you have done in the past expecting different results. Well that's just insane.

It's foolish to link arms and sing Kum-Ba-Yah, when the others keep swinging around and kicking us in the balls.

He's made his views clear...

And besides the bulk of the posts about her daughters pregnancy have more to do with Palin's stance on sex education, whether or not she was vetted by McCain and the whole "family values" line the GOP keeps handing us.

There's a difference between attacking the daughter and attacking the mother and her party over her daughters situation.

And should not be done. Bristol Palin's privacy should be respected.

The question you should be asking yourself is not "do the GOP restrain themselves?" but "should the GOP restrain themselves?"

This is the type of situation a candidate dreams of.

Obama can say nice and sympathetic things and look good to everyone, while we remind everyone how this is more evidence that the old old old man and his little lady are not prepared to run this country.

I think thats the idea.

When Obama said in as many words "children are off limits", and he didn't want his supporters to attack them - and make no mistake, what we're seeing is attacks on Bristol, not just on Sarah - you're confident that he was lying through his teeth?

By legitimizing these sorts of attacks, we are more-or-less ensuring that only candidates who (a) have no children, or close family members or (b) don't care much about their families or (c) are vicious psychopaths who enjoy a nasty fight will run for high political office. Since there aren't that many people in category (a), most would be in categories (b) or (c). Is that what we want?

If you're a decent person who values your kids' happiness, don't run for office - and then what do we get? More Bushes and Cheneys, that's what.

I can't think straight, so I didn't know what to do about the Palin pregnancy story. Thank God you came on here to tell us all how to act! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

"I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories," Obama said. "And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know, my mother had me when she was 18. And how family deals with issues and teenage children that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics, and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that is off limits."

An awful lot of people seem to assume that Obama was lying...