Palin’s Family Values: Un-Married with Children

As the Palin family continues their bizarre interpretation of good old-fashioned RNC family values, it’s amazing that Sarah manages to keep a straight face.

Now that the First Grandbaby has appeared more than a week late without benefit of the protections afforded those born into marriage, one has to ask why. Considering how apoplectic Evangelical Christians are about preserving teen virginity through ineffective chastity pledges, blocking sex education, and preventing LGBT marriages, it’s rather bizarre that the most public Evangelical politician doesn’t see the need to trot her kid down to the local Justice of the Peace? Hey, what’s good enough for Mama Palin and the First Dude should be good enough for the youngins, right?

For LGBT Americans denied the right to raise their children within the protection of marriage, the intentional out-of-wedlock Republican Evangelical Christian birth has to be yet another slap in the face. They’re waiting for the summer? Why– so they can have a big party and their baby can be the ring bearer?

Just wondering– what would have happened if Palin was moving this week to Washington, as Vice President? Would Bristol have gone with them, dragging the baby along, or would First Grandma have left Bristol behind to care alone for her new baby?

What about the First Grandbaby’s other illustrious grandma, Sherry Johnson, busted for possession? Apparently she sells Oxycontin pills for ten bucks a pop, giving grandmas and coffee klatches everywhere a bad name. Would her Secret Service detail make it tough for her to make it to her coffee klatch?

In Wasilla will the First Teen Parents live apart or will the First Dude-er be around for diaper duty, midnight feedings, and such? Or is he just visiting his child in the home of his not-yet-inlaws?

Is it meanness to focus on the family’s dysfunction, or is it a necessity, given Palin’s thirst for the political limelight and her ability to turn catastrophes from political suicide into a mere flesh wounds? American history is littered with the bodies of politicians felled by photo opps with vicious rabbits, tanks, boats named “Monkey Business”, and stained dresses, and it would be easy to assume that Palin’s surreal Cohen Brothers-esque Turkey Farm appearance sealed her fate. However, Palin’s biggest skill seems to be her ability to put an acceptable spin on things that Teflon Ronnie couldn’t have imagined. It would be a mistake to dismiss her, because marginalized and disgruntled rural blue-collar Americans feel she is one of them.

Before we ever get to the next election cycle, keep an eye on Palin, because she isn’t’ going to go away and she isn’t going to change her bullying Wild Wild West political style. She used her office to get her former brother-in-law fired, and managed to weasel out of that one. Now troopers report that her campaign stalled investigation into felony drug possession charges against daughter Bristol’s Baby Daddy’s own Momma (did you get that? There will be a quiz at the end.).

Palin brightly natters on, like a pretty Granny Clampitt, trying to sell her brood and her politics as the Poster Family for Evangelical Christian (Republican) values. What she does with her own family is her business until it gets sold to us packaged as good old-fashioned American values and politics-as-usual, appearing next on a ballot near you.

Bristol and Levi’s Wedding

So, when’s the Big Day for Bristol Palin and the First Baby Daddy, Levi Johnston? Lemme see– if the First Grandbaby is due in December, they’d better get busy pretty quick, since the Palin babies seem to come a month early.

To please her evangelical base, the First Shotgun Wedding should happen before the baby gets here, so the baby won’t be the First Bastard. Before the November 4th election would bring her some votes in Florida and Ohio. Palin and the First Dude went to the city clerk without telling their parents, even grabbing a couple of senior citizens from the nearby retirement home to be their witnesses.

So, why not march those kids down to the courthouse and make an honest girl out of Bristol? Is Levi remembering that he actually doesn’t want kids, as he said on his Facebook profile?

Are they waiting instead to make a tasteful political event, when McCain’s ratings need it the most? Will they sell the photo rights to TMZ or People Magazine to fund the baby’s college fund? Or maybe, the First Teen Parents’ college funds?

Where will the First Teen Parent Couple live after they’re married? At his parents’ home– or hers? The baby will be due shortly before the First Grandma and the First Grand-Dude plan to move to Washington, D.C.

Will the First Teen Parents move with them to D.C., or will the First Grandma move 4,312 miles away just when her oldest daughter needs her mom the most?

Is Bristol really in school in Anchorage or is she “home schooled”? By whom? Sarah apparently can’t govern without the First Dude, but apparently the kids don’t need their parents between now and November 4th? Why pull Bristol out of school in Wasilla where all her friends and support system are, and when her parents and Baby Daddy Levi live in Wasilla? Why separate Levi and Bristol?

Babies with Down Syndrome need lots of therapies in their first months, and getting schlepped around the country from one speaking engagement to another doesn’t leave time for Baby Trig to receive those.

It looks to me like it’s all about Sarah First. Everybody else gets in line, and everybody else’s needs come after her political ambitions.

Meanwhile, she’s hoping to position herself in such as way to limit our parenting choices. She wants us to leave her kids alone, but she wants to decide what we do with ours….

Blinking at Condoms and Bananas

At the recommendation of mothers older and wiser than myself, I put my teen daughters on the Pill and provided them with a bottomless container of condoms. No strings attached and no questions asked.

After bolstering myself with a glass of wine and a few tears on my friends’ shoulders, I pulled myself together, and did my job as a mom. I didn’t blink.

Of course my girls were mortified to talk openly with their mom about sex, and we were all uncomfortable. But we didn’t blink. We talked anyway, and collapsed into giggles to diffuse the tension. Between giggles, they heard that we care about them and want them to be safe. We also were clear that we don’t want them to have sex as a teenager, but if they do, we want them to be smart and safe.

After the giggles subsided, life went on as usual. Because sex and birth control had become a safe topic, our daughters shared worries about friends who engaged in risky sexual behavior, and doled out condoms trying to help.

Our daughters have repeatedly said they are grateful and proud that they can talk to their parents about sex and birth control.

Having an uncomfortable conversation with your kids isn’t a big deal. Watching your child deal with unplanned pregnancy is. Palin’s squeamishness and reliance on hope as a birth control method resulted in her daughter’s life being changed forever.

Nobody wants teenagers to have sex, get pregnant, or have to deal with the consequences. Facing reality and putting my teens on double birth control is my way of wrapping them in bubble wrap.

Palin’s parenting choices are her business until she interferes with how the rest of us parent our kids. No bananas and condom demos at school, but she does want ignorant Christian silliness taught in our science classes.

Palin and her daughter get the “choice” of how to deal with their unplanned pregnancies, but she clearly wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, ban “explicit” birth control information, and keep us from having choices. Even if it’s rape. Even if it’s incest. Even if her daughter and her “baby daddy” don’t finish school.

Obviously, she doesn’t care if there are more unplanned pregnancies, more teenagers not finishing their education.

Don’t blink. This really matters.

Watch Sarah Barracuda Burn It to The Wick

The Republicans don’t do their homework, and apparently don’t care if Bristol and Levi do theirs.

Although McBush and Palin stole their VP theme song from women’s rocker group Heart’s classic, “Barracuda”, they obviously didn’t get permission– or vet the lyrics. Check this out:

If the real thing dont do the trick
No, you better make up something quick
You gonna burn burn burn burn it to the wick
Ooooooohhhh, barra barracuda.

Oh, she’s gonna burn all right… she won’t hold up under scrutiny, and you don’t have to scratch the surface much to see that she’s more than happy to make things up when “the real thing don’t do the trick”.

It’s hard to know where she’s going to fizzle, but my guess is that American women are going to turn on her quickly. We don’t like liars, smug women, or moms who let their kids drop out of school while using them as props for their political gain.

If she presents herself as a hockey mom, we want to see her at Levi’s games, too.

Bristol and Levi drop out– WHY?

So, please explain why Sara Barracuda Palin, self-proclaimed “hockey mom” isn’t encouraging Bristol and Levi to stay in school– and play hockey? She doesn’t want to be a Hockey Mother-in-Law? Would she fly back for those tournament games?

It’s the kids’ senior year, and they’ve dropped out. Why is it that they can’t attend school with their friends and play hockey when the baby won’t be here until after the end of 1st semester?

Yet, Palin missed a day or two of work having her pre-term special needs baby, but Bristol can’t go back for her senior year of high school? Palin can have 5 kids AND be the VP, but Bristol and Levi can’t go to school?

Unless, they’ll be on the campaign trail with her INSTEAD of going to school?

Sarah Sarah Pants on Fi’ah

Sarah Palin is a lot of things, but she’s not someone who tells the truth. The Anchorage Daily News points out that she’s stretched the truth in multiple situations.

She claims to be against “pork”, AKA government earmark funds, but she bellied up to the trough early.

As Mayor of tiny Wasilla, then with fewer than 5,000 residents, she grabbed a staggering $27 MILLION in earmarked funds for that town alone. Alaska has more earmarked funds than any other state in the country.

She said that NOBODY pressured Public Safety chief Monegan to fire her ex-brother-in-law Wooten, still embroiled in a custody battle with her sister.

Yet, when the smoking gun audio surfaced with obvious proof that her staffer Frank Bailey clearly leaned on a DPS supervisor, she claimed she didn’t know, and that she “could understand how some could perceive it” as pressure. How would you interpret 24 calls from Governor’s office calls saying, “Todd and the Governor can’t understand why nothing’s happened after a year…”?

When questions arose about the firing, Palin initially said that she fired chief Monegan because he wasn’t doing enough on dealing alcoholism issues in the state— so then WHY would she offer him the head of the Alcohol Bureau Commission?

She said that trooper Wooten was dangerous and she had to rush to the house to ensure her safety– only to leave her watch post outside her window to attend a meeting. Sister’s life in danger– or not?

Palin claims trooper Wooten shot a moose out of season. The truth is that Wooten’s then-wife, Molly, begged him to get her dad off her back by taking her moose hunting. It was the last day of the season, and her dad was pressuring her to fill the tag– or Palin’s DAD would take the tag and use it. Wooten went with her, and when she didn’t want to take the shot, he downed the moose. The DNR “slapped him on the wrist” because it was an absurd claim made by Palin who clearly wants to punish him for ongoing child custody issues with her sister.

The divorce judge advised the Palin family to quit trying so hard to get Wooten fired.

The list goes on… and on…. and on. Stay tuned.

The Anchorage Daily News is doing a great job and has the details and documents posted on their website.

Drop-outs Bristol and Levi being punished, protected or exploited?

What will happen to Bristol? The soon-to-be married teen mom will give birth a few weeks before her mom plans to move to Washington D.C.

Will Bristol, Levi and baby move with them, leaving all their friends and  family behind, or will Gov. Palin leave without them, so they can “grow up sooner than planned”?

If a kid ever needed her mom to be there for her, this would be the time.

Instead, the KIDS are suffering:

Both kids are pulled from school, sacrificing their senior year for what? The baby isn’t even here yet. The Gov. can squat between the furrows and have her baby, between keynote speeches and cross-country flights, but her daughter can’t go to school when she’s pregnant? 

The Gov. covers up the pregnancy and says the girl has mono, like it’s 1970 again and pregnancy is a disease that someone can catch. Heck, Palin didn’t even tell her own staffers she was having a baby until she was 7.5 months along….

The teen father is a hockey star. He can’t play hockey and be a dad? The Gov. can have FIVE kids, including a special needs newborn and still be a mom, so please explain the difference.

Are we PUNISHING the kids for getting pregnant by pulling them out of school? PROTECTING them from the public eye? Wasilla High School is where their friends and support system are. They aren’t being protected by being kept out of school.

If they want to protect these kids, why put them in the public eye so their MySpace page, meant for their teen FRIENDS is plastered all over MTV’s webpage? (Oh, that’s right– Obama made MTV do it. And I suppose it’s his fault that the media stalks Britney Spears, too?)

Now, the kids that Palin begs for us to “leave alone” will be publicly paraded around in Palin’s entourage, expected to sit up straight, slap a happy face on a very scary situation, and not mess things up for Mommy.

Mommy Palin is still Sarah Barracuda. Only now, her kids are in her way. So, they’ll give it a good try, bless their hearts. But, they shouldn’t have to be pregnant teens in a fishbowl. On stage on TV, waving the flag for Mommy Barracuda Palin.

Hothead McCain strikes again!

Hothead McCain gets huffy and cancels Larry King interview after CNN reporter Campbell Brown’s questioning of McCain spokesperson, Tucker Bounds. When asked what decisions Palin had made as leader of Alaska’s National Guard, Tucker Bounds sputtered, changed the subject and, ultimately, couldn’t perform. Here’s the interview.

So, what does Hothead McCain do? Takes his toys, stomps off, and refuses to be interviewed. Is that how he reaches across the aisle?

If he can’t handle an interview with Larry King when he isn’t happy, how will he handle dealing with high pressure international situations?

McCain shows his colors time and time again, and it isn’t pretty.

Sarah Barracuda Palin tramples those in way of political ambition

Anybody who gets in Sarah “Barracuda” Palin’s way gets trampled, so we shouldn’t be surprised that she offered her oldest daughter’s private crisis to the media jackals to dispel rumors that could knock the wheels off her political career. Palin always puts herself first.

Palin’s poorly vetted past keeps popping up and getting creepier. She announced in March that she was 7 months pregnant, surprising her closest staffers. In the Anchorage Daily News March 6th story announcing her pregnancy, her husband was described as a “BP oil worker on leave”. So, her husband works for BP– isn’t that a conflict of interest?

She hired Chuck Kopp as Commissioner, knowing that he was fired for sexual harassment of a co-worker, apparently thinking it didn’t matter, or that people wouldn’t find out. They did find out and it did matter, forcing her to accept his resignation 11 days later when it hit the news. She gave him a $10,000 severance package– after 11 days of work.

She fired Walt Monegan after he wouldn’t succumb to pressure to fire her brother-in-law, Mike Wooten. If you have any question about whether or not she was behind that, listen to the entire audio recording of lackey Frank Bailey, available on the Anchorage Daily News website. She cut him loose for doing his job, too.

She claims to have fired Walt Monegan in part because he wasn’t doing enough to deal with alcohol issues in the state, yet offered him a job as head of the Alcohol Bureau Commission? 

 Bailey said in the smoking gun audio recording that she “likes Walt but couldn’t understand why he wasn’t moving on this after a year”. He also describes efforts to talk with Monegan and others unsuccessfully about the issue. We’re supposed to believe that 24 phone calls came from her office to the state troopers office, without her knowledge? Her staff were doing this on their own initiative, with details she fed them?

Monegan received no severance pay, even though she hand-picked him and brought him out of retirement for the position.

As mayor, she fired the Wasilla police chief because he didn’t support her political campaign. She threatened the librarian, too, for the same reason, but allowed her to keep her job.

She claims that she feared for her sister’s life because ex-brother-in-law was so dangerous, yet she left for a meeting instead of calling the cops, after watching through the window with a neighbor. 

The judge in her sister’s divorce case clearly discouraged the attempt to get Wooten fired, pointing out that getting him fired would negatively impact her sister’s alimony and child support– yet Palin apparently didn’t care.

Did she really clean house and weed out corruption, or has she abused her power for personal and political gain? 

Is this how she’s going to “reach across the aisle”? Palin’s low approval ratings in Alaska should be a red flag for the rest of us. They’ve seen her in action, and they don’t like what they see.

Troopergate

Why this isn’t making more news in the lower 48 media, I have no idea. Palin is in the middle of an active ethics investigation against her for abuse of power, trying to get her sister’s husband fired.

Read this article and listen to the audio of the conversation between Palin staffer Frank Bailey and the state trooper’s office. He clearly, clearly, clearly called on the behalf of the governor, with details that only she could have supplied to him, trying to get them to fire the guy. It’s disgusting and I hope that it’s cleared up soon. Here’s the article, but listen to ALL of the audio:

http://www.adn.com/monegan/story/493360.html

Poor judgement all the way around. McCain just now getting around to sending a team to vet Palin…. He didn’t talk to any of the GOP party folks in Alaska. When did Palin really tell him about her daughter’s situation? “Last week”? That means that he took a week or less to make a decision about this? 

Troopergate is a major scandal and it’s not looking good for her. I hope the pressure stays on her ethics and her decision-making. I’m still trying to figure out how she’s espousing family values by hiding her kid’s pregnancy, pulling her from school, and using her kid’s situation to further her political and ideological agenda. The same way she’s used her office to get her ex-relative fired.

She is not professional, not a good candidate, and when all the dust settles, she probably will be in serious legal trouble as well.