Anyone who thinks attacking Palin on her mothering is a good tactic, is a political moron

or a professional shit stirrer trying to help McCain/Palin. It really is the stupidist attack on her anyone could make. It's attacking motherhood and apple pie.

So I have a question for those doing this shit day in and day out on this board: What on earth do you think you're accomplishing?

-She opposes a woman's right to choose even for rape, incest or the health of the woman. No exception for a 10-year-old, a woman carrying a fetus with no chance of life, a woman on the edge of suicide—let alone the woman who is not ready to be a parent, who is escaping domestic violence, who is already stretched to the limit as a single mother. She wants to force more than 1 million women and girls a year to give birth against their will and judgment.

-She believes the war in Iraq is "God's task".

-She thinks we should teach creationism in our public schools.

-She doesn't believe in global warming.

-She is against Equal Pay.

-She is against Universal Health Care.

-She is in favor of capital punishment.

-She is in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

ever to be on the Republican ticket. That may be factually arguable, but it's a lot more accurate than saying Obama is the most liberal dem candidate ever. Paint her over and over and over and over again as radically right wing and out of the mainstream.

She is a proponent of shooting wolves and other wildlife from airplanes. Palin Offers $150 for every fresh left wolf leg.

from Sarah Palin.

http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2008/09/saradise-lost-chapter-thirty-eight.html.

She is much more dangerous with this religious stuff than George Bush ever thought of being. She actually believes it; she's not just using it for her political purposes.

If she is an advocate for special needs children, why did she cut the special needs budget by 62% in the first year a Governor.

If she's so ethical, how did she end up with an ethics investigation from a Republican controlled legislature within 4 months of taking office.

Why did the citizens of Wasilla threaten to recall her when she attempted to fire the Librarian for refusing to ban certain books from the library.

Why does she insist she was against the Bridge to nowhere, when she actually publicly supported it when she ran for governor. And where's the money. she didn't send it back to the U.S. treasury, but used it for other pork projects.

Excuse the pun, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Her oldest son had to move to Michigan for his senior year and then going right
into the army.

Bristol's long absence from school because of mono.

Sarah's my water broke in TX but I flew to Alaska and then drove to Wasilla to have my
baby story.

Her kids drinking and using guns.

Look if the right is going to trot her out and say look @ this great mother than
some of these things are fair game.

attacking her on these things is so stupid it's breathtaking. The kind of stupid that hurts Obama, that marginalizes other criticism and that gets the left blogosphere successfully conflated by the right with the media, muting any rare media criticism of her.

But by all means continue the idiocy.

If she is running w/ her moterhood as one of the points in her favor
then certain aspects are fair game ...... If you are pro life and you risk
the life of your child by waiting more than 9 hours before getting
medical help after your water breaks that calls into question her
qualifications and judgment.

that are a major disappointment .When Palin is attacked for not producing perfect kids,anyone who has had the same experience with their own children will take it as a personal insult.She is a right wing nut,the surest way to get people to bury that fact is to concentrate on her "mothering" skills,that won't go over well with mothers of all stripes and she will garner some sympathy for it.

for her from mothers and fathers who also have "imperfect" kids. AND to criticize her for the way she has chosen to balance work and family (even if you can justify it intellectually) will come of insensitive by many parents/voters who may be sensitive about their own work/family tradeoffs.

She is wrong on so many issues and is so inexperienced that, if we can't discredit her competence to be vice president on these alone, perhaps we don't deserve to win an election. I think that Obama and Biden are plenty smart enough to accomplish this task. They know this is a 2-month battle, not a 1-week post-convention skirmish. The sooner her competence is discredited the better, as far as I am concerned, but as long as it is done by November 4, I'll be happy. If Obama and Biden can't do that, then they are not as smart as I think they are.

or are you proving the OP's point?

ANYONE stupid enough to suggest that her mothering is a usable target-of-opportunity is probably a republican agent.


Have you got anything to contribute?

And was extremely disrespectful of both Michelle and Barack.

I don't think it made any difference either way.

The reason I'm interested in Sarah Palin's mothering is because I think she is lying about being the mother of Trig.

Her mothering is an issue because she wants to tell the rest of us how to run our lives. If her way is so great, then lets examine the evidence.

:eyes:

really doestn help us

is how some in the media are suggesting that Barack is behind it, as Mika just did on msnbc. I thought he was pretty clear that he condemns such tactics. I am in complete agreement with you cali, it is dumb. Particularly when the real issues are so clearly enough to derail the mclame ticket.

It has the potential to backfire.
There are too many issues with substance to attack her with.
The last thing we need is for this election to turn into an episode of the Jerry Springer Show.

There's plenty to attack her on.

Sid

there are women my wife works with that are appalled that she is running for the vice president because she has a down syndrome baby and a daughter who is pregnant. anyone with a functioning brain cell knows she threw her 17 year old daughter under the bus to save her ass. if she can do this to her own daughter it seems to me her motherhood is fair game because it goes to the real issue...she `s willing to do anything to become the president of the united states no matter who is in the way..

Those are not compelling reasons to be appalled. But the real problem with this beyond stupid tactic is that it hurts Obama and mutes vital criticism.

under the same circumstances? That's really the bottom line for many working moms who aspire to something beyond motherhood defining them.You might as well argue that "biology is destiny". I don't like Sarah Palin,but it's not her ambition that bothers me,she's no more or less ambitious than a lot of men would be in the same situation.

There are some people on this board who think that kids raise themselves or that raising kids isn't as important as pursuing career advancement.

It's clear that Palin puts her career first. For some voters that will be a negative. That's not sexist. It's reality.

I beleive that many of these posters here on DU are simply Freepers and RNC plants. The fact is that the GOP is behind the attacks on Palin's family. They desperately want the discussion to focus on her instead of the criminality and disaster of the GW Bush Admin. I hope all DU'ers make a mental note of those posters that keep pushing these types of attacks. It is my bet that most are simply provocateurs.

and rumor as well as the difference between opinion and fact.

She is a liar, that is an established fact.

Beyond that just about everything is speculation, by design on the part of the McGigolo campaign.

I think she is lying about Trig being her child, the circumstances just do not add up. And the reason it is important is due to the strong possibility of insurance fraud being involved.

Go and look at your own medical insurance policy and see if the children of your minor children are covered under that policy. I'll be quite surprised if they are.

The entire trig/child of Bristol rumor is exactly that- a rumor. And yes, she's a liar, hardly unusual for a politician, though she certainly is a brazen one.

You are taking the word of an established liar on a matter in which they have a great deal at stake..

trying to help her. You've posted the idiot false "banned book list". You've attacked her 6 year old daughter for spit grooming baby Trig. And so on. That crap is hurting Obama and helping Palin.

and saying that the fact her teenage daughter got pregnant does noting more than create sympathy among many voters in a similar situation (or those who are grateful they dodged that bullet). Threads that criticize the fact that a 5 year old (I think) did the "spit smooth" hair thing on the baby, or that Palin didn't put the baby in a car seat for a tour (presumably a slow tour) and threads that are outright lies--these do Obama no favors.

It is her stand on "Hillary" issues we should concentrate on.

Palin is Bush in a tailored dress. She's four more years of the last eight. She is a bad government, crony-loving Republican with extremist views on almost every issue. Saying she's a bad mom is a non-starter.

HOWEVER...

If there is dirty laundry in her past, it deserves as much air time as possible. If she did anything illegal, immoral, or even questionable it's fair game. The Republicans and their corporate masters have no qualms about bringing it on. We have to match them toe to toe or risk losing yet again.

to stop attacking her as a mother. :wtf:

there are several every day. duh.

:crazy:

For the past two weeks DU has been flooded with posts questioning whether a mother with young children should be VP, saying she must be a terrible mother (pregnant teenage daughter, kids up too late), not to mention the flat-out lying statements. With all of the proof that she is a Neanderthal, small-minded, poorly-informed idiot, why do we need to bring up unsubstantiated rumors and gossip, or question her parenting (not her husband's skills, you note)?

Palin's own party and religion. Maybe I haven't read the same posts you have. Could you give me a link to one so I can see what you're talking about?

LET HER RAVE ON

said it, that dozens of liberals have said it; we must all be just like rove. try applying some critical thinking. if it's possible for you to do so. otherwise just continue with your drooling.

said it, that dozens of liberals have said it; we must all be just like rove. try applying some critical thinking. if it's possible for you to do so. otherwise just continue with your drooling.

The question is not whether Sarah can be an effective VP with 5 kids (one with special needs), but rather can she be an effective mother holding down the 3rd most critical job in the United States?

p.s. Karl Rove has the #1 job of Minister of Propaganda.

Sounds like we need a law that a mother with 5 kids should be limited to working at jobs that are not high profile.

And any such mother who is effectively handling a high-profile job, needs a visit from Childrens Services, because she cannot be an effective mother at the same time. :(

I realize that there is an incredible amount of hypocrisy in the RW's support of Palin and her family. I only wish that we didn't try to equal their hypocrisy by now asserting that a woman can't be an effective mother and vice president at the same time. Until 10 days ago I couldn't have imagined a progressive making that argument.

wing nutcase against so called progressives.

parenting role than she is? Or would that be "bad" too?

and her STATEMENTS, however.

That's very different from attacking her on mothering.

The fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't make them either stupid or a freeper. It simply makes them someone with an opinion different from yours, and they have every bit as much right to their opinion as you to do yours.

The IMAGE has be shown to be a lie.

After all, it appears to be a family value he learned at daddy's knee. And please don't tell me it's not the same b/c Bristol is a teenager. If she's old enough to get married, she's old enough for her actions to be under scrutiny. (I'm saying this as someone who was married with a baby at 17.)

I do agree that Palin's infant should not be dragged into this, not even if it turns out to be Bristol's baby. That kid will have enough problems having Down Syndrome.

have been involved with shady financial doings. That deserves scrutiny. If it was a matter of his having a messy divorce a la Hillary's brother, that would be another.

abstinence only education her own daughter received. I honestly don't hear much of anyone talking shit about Bristol (I haven't the "she's a slut" BS we heard from the right about that Spears' girl's pregnancy, for example), but I've heard a lot of people talking about how Bristol's condition is a result of Sarah Palin's ineptitude as a mother with regard to sex education. That's not attacking the kid, it's attacking the candidate. Seriously, these people brought this upon themselves (and by that, I mean Sarah Palin, not Bristol). I'll stay out of their family's sexual business when they stay out of mine.

Do you really think that every pregnant teenager (not to mention the fathers-to-be) were only exposed to abstinence only sex education? Again, any parent of a teenager knows that, no matter how you educate your children, in the end it's an individual decision whether or not to have sex (and whether or not to use birth control). Even with the best information, sometimes hormones win out over common sense. Attack Palin's idiotic opposition to abortion even in the case of rape, or her support for abstinence only education for everyone's kids, but it's a loser to say she's a bad mother because her teenage daughter is pregnant. As Obama himself said, his own mother was a teenager--not really somewhere we want to go.

My mother provided me with almost no sexual education, and what I learned in school was a joke, but I certainly understood the risks of unprotected sex when I engaged in it at Bristol's age. But you're missing my point: the issue is NOT teen pregnancy, the issue is abstinence only education. Public health records show that there is a higher rate of teen pregnancies and STDs (and pre-marital anal sex, for that matter) in areas where abstinence only programs are the only sex ed kids get.

Just wondering.

I mean besides the Palinesque book burning pearl-clutcher brigade?

Now, which one of these is you & which one belongs to the Palinesque book-burning, pearl-clutcher brigade?

but politics make strange bedfellows, I guess. I believe, besides the descriptions you've provided, there is quite a bit of a backward element at work also, not understanding the hypocritical nature of their reactions.

Hypocrites disparaging hypocrites may eventually become a consciousness raising event for some, but mere weeks before an important election is a rather inopportune time to be having "lightbulb" moments.

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