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.

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.

Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston drop out

What kind of family values are these? Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston should be entering their senior year in high school. Instead, they’ve both dropped out of school, and now being schlepped around the country to act as the poster children for Mommy Palin’s pro-life politics.

Despite pleas to “leave the kids alone”, Palin will spotlight them at the Republican National Convention. WHO is violating their privacy?

Better question, is WHY…..?

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.