ScottMcDaniel dot org

Citing ‘the need to take care of her family’.

McCain still gets the ‘he chose a woman’ vote as well as the historical footnote, Palin goes back to relative obscurity, her daughter becomes a Pairs Hilton like celeb, and the GOP gets Pawlenty. Oh, and they will blame the Democrats in some way.

First – the biggest victim in all of this is Bristol Palin. A relatively normal kid who does what teenage kids inevitably and biologically do – and now she is going to end up paying the price on the national (and world) scene. This kids life is ruined – and not by having a baby, but by the TMZish media blitz she is going to encounter for the rest of her troubled life.

Questions:

What would possess Sarah Palin (who voted against birth control, sex education and womens reproductive rights) to hide the fact that their teen daughter is pregnant and not married?

What would possess the McCain camp to not thoroughly check out this family before putting them in this position?

What does it say to ‘conservative’ values that something like this – which happens to thousands and thousands of families very day, I’m sure – is now going to allow the Right to demonize the Palins and their daughter?

Religion needs to stay out of politics – period.

This is my problem with the new conservative movement – it’s all about religious and unrealistic moral views. Everything is black and white and rigid. There’s no room for being human. They eschew these Christian values while being hypocritical to the extreme. Old Conservatism wasn’t like this – it was about having values and trying to live up to them. Now it’s ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

None of this is about taxes, or oil or war – it’s about what they think is right and what they think is wrong. But the problem is that while they have their Bibles out, they only have the Old Testament open. They are no better than the religions that don’t allow women to go out in public without covering themselves or stone women to death for being raped.

This crap is the reason why I was a registered Republican until this year. Conservatives used to be for doing the right thing and not forcing others to conform to their structure by governing their actions – now it’s do it our way or else.

I know a little something about being on the downside. I’ve been dirt poor, have had to beg for help from friends and family and strangers – and yes, I’ve had to depend on government sponsored programs in my younger days. Maybe that’s why I don’t see it as a hand-out, but as a hand up. there is absolutely not a single person in this world that hasn’t had to rely on someone else to move forward.

Oh, and I’ve got news for you: if you’ve ever been on WIC, gotten the Earned Income Credit on your taxes, gotten a student loan, gotten food stamps or been to a public health department (for birth control or a vaccine or a flu shot even) – you too have gotten a ‘handout’ – how exactly are you better than anyone else?

This whole election process has been a struggle – personal freedoms versus jingoism (stay in Iraq or let them govern themselves). Morals against personal responsibility (gay marriage, abortion). Beliefs versus associations (Hagee, Wright, Ayers). What would have been viewed as conservative views in the past are now liberal and what is now conservative used to be fundamentalism.

There is such a bizarre dichotomy in what people think. They don’t want gun control, but they want less crime. They want to pay less taxes but want schools to be better. They want freedom of speech but call the ACLU ‘commies’. They want fewer teen pregnancies but won’t teach sex-ed. They want monogamy but can’t stay faithful. They want the truth but only if it is accompanied by a tiny American flag.

It’s time to realize that the world isn’t black and white and it’s time to take back our freedoms without being subjected to the mores of people who can’t even keep their own houses in order.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24885309/

MADISON, S.D. – She might be lacking in delegates, money and avenues to the Democratic nomination, but if nothing else, Hillary Rodham Clinton has clearly solidified her front-running position as the presidential candidate to have cocktails with.

After an event Wednesday night in Rapid City, Senator Clinton added a notch to her belt on the drinking-war front when she strode to the back of her plane nursing a generous tumbler of amber-colored liquid. The substance was the subject of much debate among the press corps, but no one had the nerve to ask the candidate directly.

Bourbon, it turned out. (Makers Mark, specified Jay Carson, a campaign spokesman.)

In the course of her presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton has bemoaned the triviality of elections, noting that they seem to devolve at times into a contest of whom America would rather have a beer with.

“We tried that once and it didn’t work out so well,” she has said, referring to George W. Bush’s apparent victory in the drinking-buddy primary over Al Gore (never mind that Mr. Bush long ago stopped drinking).

She said nothing, however, about the harder stuff. And, indeed, one of the amusing sidelights of Mrs. Clinton’s uphill struggles of recent months has been her evolving taste in liquid refreshment.

Early in the campaign, it was not uncommon to see the former first lady daintily sipping cranberry juice or tea in the front of her campaign plane, or the occasional taste of wine. But in recent weeks, as she has burnished a connection with bar-stool Democrats, Mrs. Clinton has at times threatened to turn the race for the Democratic nomination into a drinking contest, with Senator Barack Obama stepping up to the plate to down Yuenglings in Pennsylvania.

For Mrs. Clinton, it began in Indiana last month with the now semi-famous photo opportunity of her bellying up for some shots and a beer in a Crown Point tavern. There was a subsequent visit to the Makers Mark distillery in Kentucky this month, and a picture last weekend in Puerto Rico of Mrs. Clinton posing with a bottle of Presidente beer.

And then there was Wednesday night’s airborne bourbon swig in front of reporters on her plane, with Mrs. Clinton holding court for the diminishing press pool accompanying her.

Fernando Suarez, a reporter for CBS News who has been traveling with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign since October, asked her if she had ever been to Mount Rushmore before her visit there earlier in the day. Mrs. Clinton said she in fact had.

“Before you were born,” she added, looking at Mr. Suarez, who is 29, and noting that “I did a lot of things before you were born.”

She swirled the bourbon in her glass and nodded mischievously.

“And thank god you weren’t around,” Mrs. Clinton continued. “Or I wouldn’t have enjoyed any of them.”

The imagination tumbles.

Very cool story about Baracks personal assistant, Reggie Love, via the NYT.

Mr. Love, 26, is Mr. Obama’s body man, the personal aide who shadows the senator and anticipates everything he needs — and everything he does not need. He is not a bodyguard (security is provided by the Secret Service), but rather the ultimate assistant, rarely more than a body length away from the candidate.

Young, eager campaign aides are stock characters in movies and on television, but few have quite the élan of Mr. Love, who, at 6-foot-5, is about three inches taller than the tall candidate, fitter than the fit candidate (he can bench press more than 350 pounds) and cooler than the cool candidate.

“There’s no doubt that Reggie is cooler than I am,” Mr. Obama said, laughing, in a phone interview. “I am living vicariously through Reggie.”

I like this:

Compared with the even-tempered and self-controlled Mr. Obama, Mr. Love is raffish, always joking with the Secret Service, offering closed-fist high-fives to members of the news media and making frequent appearances in the daily pool reports. At a V.F.W. hall in Indiana, he helped out when the senator did not want a second Budweiser, taking it off Mr. Obama’s hands.

:)