The more I learn about Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the more I fear her. I have read upwards of 20 websites and at least five op-ed pieces in the local papers to glean as much as I can about this woman whose name I have never heard. What I found is disturbing, and downright scary, at times.
Fox News keeps referring to her as "beauty queen" and "beauty pageant winner", but what I have discovered is that she did win a local pageant called Miss Wasilla and that she came in 2nd runner up in the Miss Alaska pageant. That's really not a winner, folks. It's more like an also-ran. Second runner-up? That means there were two other girls/women who were prettier, smarter, more talented and looked better in a bikini.
She is a deeply religious woman, having been baptized as Catholic as a teenager, but describes herself as a "non-denominational Christian" and a "post-denominationalist Christian." If that isn't political double-speak, I don't know what is...
Her beliefs frighten me. She believes that a woman should have no choice or voice when it comes to abortion. Even if it is due to incest or rape. She belongs to a group called the "Feminists For Life," and anti-abortion group. When I read the name of the organization, my first thought was that it was a group of white upper-class soccer mom's who were pissed that the local lesbians were getting better press than they were, so they formed this coffee-club to get more attention from their already deficient lives. Despite claiming to be pro-life, Palin is a staunch supporter of the death penalty. Two sides of one coin, eh? Makes no sense to me, since a life is a life, no matter how you look at it. Death for some, but life for others. Sounds two-faced.
Palin is against gay-marriage (and I admit to not being a proponent. Why should we have to suffer like all the straight folks?) and has supported constitutional amendments to ban health benefits to same sex couples, and is a vocal supporter of Bush's attempts to amend the constitution to ban same sex unions on a Federal level. Yet, she vetoed a bill to block public employee health benefits to same sex couples, claiming it is "unconstitutional." I don't get it.
Sarah believes that creationism should be taught in public schools. She downplayed this recently by saying she supports more debate about creationism and evolution being taught to children.
Wow! She sure does love them children, don't she? It's okay to murder someone for committing a crime, but it is not okay for a psychologically damaged woman (incest or rape) to chose to keep or not to keep a fetus that was born of hate and raw ugliness. Don't those kids grow up to be the same crooks that Sarah is setting down into a metal chair and then cranking up the juice? Makes no sense.
Palin doesn't believe in global warming, or, more importantly, that it is a man-made phenomena. Her husband works in middle-management in the Big Oil arena, and I am sure his income is into the seven figures, and she even took on the Endangered Species Act for listing the polar bear as endangered because it fucked with her state's oil drilling and supports aerial hunting of wolves to keep the population in check. She is an avid hunter and ice fisher, and boasts of the many furs that adorn her home's walls. In fact, in one interview, she gushes with girlish pride that the number of furs in her closet are more special to her. Apparently, she has a fur fetish, and has coats made of many exotic animals, and she is proud to wear her furs to meetings and public spectacles. I saw some pics of her in her furs and she is definitely at home in them.
She scares me.
From what I have read, she seems very contradictory. As if she will fold the moment she is faced with a whiff of derision or scandal. Isn't that how it is for those beauty contest girls? No scandals! No deviations! Keep to the script and hope for the scepter at the end... The Republicans have touted her as "no-nonsense," "willing to take on big government/corruption, etc.," "tough on big oil," ad nauseum. I think she's a scared little girl who got where she is by being a minor version of Ann Coulter - a young, skinny white woman who looks good in a bikini, a skirt or camouflage. She's a Republican wet dream - sexy and drives an SUV.
And I don't like her wig. That stupid little attachment she wears that looks like Karen from Will and Grace. It looks tacky. Like Karen, she is a rich woman in a world she doesn't understand and doesn't understand her.
And apparently, her daddy owns a gold mine in Alaska. I guess their rich. Her family has a lodge in some snow capped, unspoiled terrain of Alaska where they go hunting and ice fishing and eat Mooseburgers (gross!) for dinner.
I am going to take the time to get to know this woman as best I can. As a registered voter, it is my obligation to know the facts. And I will vote Democrat, nonetheless.
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2 comments:
You write:
"Despite claiming to be pro-life, Palin is a staunch supporter of the death penalty. Two sides of one coin, eh? Makes no sense to me, since a life is a life, no matter how you look at it. Death for some, but life for others. Sounds two-faced."
To be more clear, pro-life is a description of those opposed to abortion, not the death penalty.
Anti death penalty folks are labelled anti death penalty, not pro-life.
Soem additonal clarification:
2004, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with guidance to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated succinctly, emphatically and unambiguously as follows: June, 2004 "Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia." http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=1125
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick: More Concerned with 'Comfort' than Christ?, Catholic Online, 7/11/2004
In a practical fashion, one could call the death penalty position pro-life. See below.
But, again, I think that confuses the death penalty issue with the abortion issue.
The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
Often, the death penalty dialogue gravitates to the subject of innocents at risk of execution. Seldom is a more common problem reviewed. That is, how innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
To state the blatantly clear, living murderers, in prison, after release or escape, are much more likely to harm and murder, again, than are executed murderers.
Although an obvious truism, it is surprising how often folks overlook the enhanced incapacitation benefits of the death penalty over incarceration.
No knowledgeable and honest party questions that the death penalty has the most extensive due process protections in US criminal law.
Therefore, actual innocents are more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment and more likely to die in prison serving under that sentence, that it is that an actual innocent will be executed.
That is. logically, conclusive.
16 recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, find for death penalty deterrence.
A surprise? No.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Some believe that all studies with contrary findings negate those 16 studies. They don't. Studies which don't find for deterrence don't say no one is deterred, but that they couldn't measure those deterred.
What prospect of a negative outcome doesn't deter some? There isn't one . . . although committed anti death penalty folk may say the death penalty is the only one.
However, the premier anti death penalty scholar accepts it as a given that the death penalty is a deterrent, but does not believe it to be a greater deterrent than a life sentence. Yet, the evidence is compelling and un refuted that death is feared more than life.
Some death penalty opponents argue against death penalty deterrence, stating that it's a harsher penalty to be locked up without any possibility of getting out.
Reality paints a very different picture.
What percentage of capital murderers seek a plea bargain to a death sentence? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of convicted capital murderers argue for execution in the penalty phase of their capital trial? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of death row inmates waive their appeals and speed up the execution process? Nearly zero. They prefer long term imprisonment.
This is not, even remotely, in dispute.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Furthermore, history tells us that lifers have many ways to get out: Pardon, commutation, escape, clerical error, change in the law, etc.
In choosing to end the death penalty, or in choosing not implement it, some have chosen to spare murderers at the cost of sacrificing more innocent lives.
Furthermore, possibly we have sentenced 20-25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have all been released upon post conviction review. The anti death penalty claims, that the numbers are significantly higher, are a fraud, easily discoverable by fact checking.
6 inmates have been released from death row because of DNA evidence. An additional 9 were released from prison, because of DNA exclusion, who had previously been sentenced to death.
The innocents deception of death penalty opponents has been getting exposure for many years. Even the behemoth of anti death penalty newspapers, The New York Times, has recognized that deception.
To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row . . . (1) This when death penalty opponents were claiming the release of 119 "innocents" from death row. Death penalty opponents never required actual innocence in order for cases to be added to their "exonerated" or "innocents" list. They simply invented their own definitions for exonerated and innocent and deceptively shoe horned large numbers of inmates into those definitions - something easily discovered with fact checking.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
If we accept that the best predictor of future performance is past performance, we can reasonable conclude that the DNA cases will be excluded prior to trial, and that for the next 8000 death sentences, that we will experience a 99.8% accuracy rate in actual guilt convictions. This improved accuracy rate does not include the many additional safeguards that have been added to the system, over and above DNA testing.
Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?
Unlikely.
Full report -All Innocence Issues: The Death Penalty, upon request.
Full report - The Death Penalty as a Deterrent, upon request
(1) The Death of Innocents: A Reasonable Doubt,
New York Times Book Review, p 29, 1/23/05, Adam Liptak,
national legal correspondent for The NY Times
copyright 2007-2008, Dudley Sharp
Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS, VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Pro death penalty sites
homicidesurvivors(dot)com/categories/Dudley%20Sharp%20-%20Justice%20Matters.aspx
www(dot)dpinfo.com
www(dot)cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
www(dot)clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
www(dot)coastda.com/archives.html
www(dot)lexingtonprosecutor.com/death_penalty_debate.htm
www(dot)prodeathpenalty.com
www(dot)yesdeathpenalty.com/deathpenalty_com
yesdeathpenalty.googlepages.com/home2 (Sweden)
www(dot)wesleylowe.com/cp.html
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