I used to not mind politician/Fox News person Mike Huckabee. He always seemed like a decent guy. He'd sit down and talk rationally with people on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
Seriously, anyone who has ever seen him on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report knows he can be a completely normal guy when he wants to be. I didn't (and still don't) agree with him on almost every issue, but he seemed rational and calm when defending his issues and that is something to value in a world with Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins.
Enter the upcoming Presidential Election Year...
Twice this week alone he's said things that rub me the wrong way entirely.
First: The whole Barack Obama growing up in Kenya debacle. While I could understand occasionally saying one word when you mean another (I do it all the time) his statements literally make no sense if you just insert Indonesia where he said Kenya. The whole story falls apart. It's like saying Harry Potter wasn't a wizard, he was a ghost. The story stops working the way it should. This irritated me, but I just figured Huckabee felt the need to toss his hat in amongst the Tea-Party for easily secured votes.
Second (The reason for this post): Today I found an article about comments he made about Natalie Portman being a bad role model for "glorify and glamorize the idea" of being an unwed mother. First of all, if there is someone to look up to in Hollywood it's Natalie Portman. She's a great actress and she hasn't been caught in any kind of 'scandal' except for the scandalously bad Star Wars Prequels. Hell, she paused her career to focus on college when many actresses in her place may have just skipped college all together. What's not to like about that? More and more people are having children and relationships out of wedlock, it's just a sign of the times. She's not the first, nor will she be the last single mother. On top of all this: She's engaged to the father of her child and seems head over heels in love with him. It hardly seems like she's sleeping around willy-nilly. She's in what looks to be a committed and stable relationship and will love her baby. I ask again: What's not to like about that?
So, Mike Huckabee, you have fallen out of favor with me, a young and excited voter. If you honestly feel this way about these two issuses I no longer respect you. And if you said these things to garner tea party support, I respect you even less than that.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Friday, March 4, 2011
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Cue Abortion Rant:
To understand the following rant please follow these next few facts:
1. I HATE MASS EMAILS! Plain and simple, they rub me the wrong way. I don't send 'em (all but once). I don't like gettin' em. Sure I'll respond if I know something (for a survey) but usually it's a waste of my time. They are some of the first things to get deleted even when I'm not cleaning out my inbox.
2. I don't like misrepresented and/or falsified facts. I don't like 'quote mining.' I don't like not being able to believe something because an organization uses above tactics to try and prove another point. I also don't like it when people buy into said "facts" at face value.
3. I don't like it when people assume one thing automatically equals another. As it pertains to what I'm about to rant about I'll use the old AntiAbortion ALWAYS=ProLife. It doesn't. Being "ProLife" really means that not only do you think abortion is wrong, you refuse to believe in euthanasia, capital punishment (of anyone). You should also practice what you preach by, adopting a child of any age and of any ethnicity. You believe in Health Care for all, no matter what. Unfortunately in America many people don't see past the "oh dear we're killing cute little babies" part of the all inclusiveness of "Pro Life." A cute baby is easy to defend, grizzly prisoners...not so much. Some people just do the easy part and call it Pro Life.
So those facts being said I check my email today (after a loooong day), and what do I find? A Mass email, about how we should all send President Obama an empty red envelope with a cutesy little note on the back, urging him not to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (with an equally cutesy name of FOCA... makes me want to do jazz hands for some odd reason).
Now we get to the misrepresentation of facts bit (my favorite part): Anti Abortioners (I'll call them this because I don't know where most stand on other life issues) LOVE to cite the fact that Barack Obama once said "Well, the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act" at Planned Parenthood. Iz teh evil demon and he shud be aborted rite? Uh no. While said quote is quoted correctly it should be looked at in the context of the (I assume) evening. He was asked a question about how he as President would protect a woman's right to choose, keeping the decision in her hands as opposed to the Previous Administration's "choice" to leave it to a bunch of politicians. The above is his response to the question. So his response means that it would be the first thing he'd do as President about abortion. AS of late he's been busy with the economy and hasn't dealt with FOCA or abortion much lately has he? So this point shouldn't even be a point, but it still gets brought up in annoying emails.
Now comes the "Oh, you're just ProChoice/ProDeath" bit. Well, no I'm not ProDeath, that would be highly illogical of just about anyone. I just can't in GOOD CONSCIENCE make abortion illegal for several reasons
1) Illegal abortions=dangerous abortions. In some ProLife tainted religion class we were told that abortions now are dangerous and can result in sickness or even death. Gee, what happens when they're no longer being performed in safe clinics or hospitals but in back alleys, backs of vans, peoples homes? Simple MORE people get sick or die because things are no longer sterile.
2) Let's say a woman has one or two illegal abortions. The maximum sentence in the State of Missouri(where I and my one reader live) for a premeditated murder is...Capital Punishment! I smell hypocrisy already. Some have argued, to me, that you should punish the doctor or whoever performed it, to which I point out anyone who hires a hit man also gets punished, usually worse.
3) I know that these are getting to be rare but if a mother would die in child birth leaving kids behind I think, as sad as it is, she should be able to choose to be a mother to the children she's already had instead of dying. Do I think it's the best situation (or even likely)? No, but should it occur a mother should be able to not have a baby.
4) If someone is raped they should be able to have an abortion. I've heard the 'destroying the evidence' argument, but listen: there are seminal fluids, pubic hairs and all sorts of other pieces of evidence the police find in a simple rape kit. Second even if all these other traces of evidence were not present DNA could probably (I'm not sure, but I think we can do genetic testing on unborn babies such as Downs Syndrome testing) be extracted before or (probably less likely) after abortion. And as my brother has said if a fourteen year old girl is raped she shouldn't have to carry the shame around for months. I've heard the "having an abortion causes twice as much pain" argument, but the only people I've heard it from have gotten so many other facts wrong I can't take it at face value anymore, and it disheartens me. I've heard the "there is only a 10% chance a woman can actually get pregnant while being raped" argument too, to which I respond, why yes 10%, doesn't sound like zero and that too has the taintedness of other wrong facts.
5) We don't adopt what kids we do have. I know several families who consider themselves "Pro Life" but haven't adopted a single child who needs a loving stable home. There are some who adopt a BABY from a foreign country, but we have several older children in need of homes in our own country as well who are left in the system until they are turned out on the street at 18. As cute as foreign babies are, we need to be able to provide homes for children in our own country as well.
Back to FOCA. I've heard FOCA is supposedly going to wipe out everything from freedom of conscience laws, sterilization of instruments and other crazy things, all of which is untrue, I'm not gonna go into it myself, the people at Snopes do a much better job= http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/choice.asp
Does it get rid of lots of limitations? Yes, but to me these only seem to be helping people stuck in bad situations. This Link also addresses common issues such as Catholic Hospitals and their stake, parental consent, partial birth abortion, and taxpayer funding. Really worth the read.
This is where I should end with either something witty or something powerful, but I suck at conclusions. They are my weak point.
If you want to argue, feel free. I am always up for a debate, but a few requests: when finding facts try to find them from a third party source, not a religious pamphlet (I'm sorry I just have issues trusting things that have lied to me); use facts not just beliefs (it'll be hard I know, really not trying to be facetious); read the snopes link (so I don't have to end up quoting it back to you anyway). That's about it. Also I don't take kindly to statements such as: "You should be aborted." etcetera. That only shows low brow hypocrisy and I won't have any of it.
1. I HATE MASS EMAILS! Plain and simple, they rub me the wrong way. I don't send 'em (all but once). I don't like gettin' em. Sure I'll respond if I know something (for a survey) but usually it's a waste of my time. They are some of the first things to get deleted even when I'm not cleaning out my inbox.
2. I don't like misrepresented and/or falsified facts. I don't like 'quote mining.' I don't like not being able to believe something because an organization uses above tactics to try and prove another point. I also don't like it when people buy into said "facts" at face value.
3. I don't like it when people assume one thing automatically equals another. As it pertains to what I'm about to rant about I'll use the old AntiAbortion ALWAYS=ProLife. It doesn't. Being "ProLife" really means that not only do you think abortion is wrong, you refuse to believe in euthanasia, capital punishment (of anyone). You should also practice what you preach by, adopting a child of any age and of any ethnicity. You believe in Health Care for all, no matter what. Unfortunately in America many people don't see past the "oh dear we're killing cute little babies" part of the all inclusiveness of "Pro Life." A cute baby is easy to defend, grizzly prisoners...not so much. Some people just do the easy part and call it Pro Life.
So those facts being said I check my email today (after a loooong day), and what do I find? A Mass email, about how we should all send President Obama an empty red envelope with a cutesy little note on the back, urging him not to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (with an equally cutesy name of FOCA... makes me want to do jazz hands for some odd reason).
Now we get to the misrepresentation of facts bit (my favorite part): Anti Abortioners (I'll call them this because I don't know where most stand on other life issues) LOVE to cite the fact that Barack Obama once said "Well, the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act" at Planned Parenthood. Iz teh evil demon and he shud be aborted rite? Uh no. While said quote is quoted correctly it should be looked at in the context of the (I assume) evening. He was asked a question about how he as President would protect a woman's right to choose, keeping the decision in her hands as opposed to the Previous Administration's "choice" to leave it to a bunch of politicians. The above is his response to the question. So his response means that it would be the first thing he'd do as President about abortion. AS of late he's been busy with the economy and hasn't dealt with FOCA or abortion much lately has he? So this point shouldn't even be a point, but it still gets brought up in annoying emails.
Now comes the "Oh, you're just ProChoice/ProDeath" bit. Well, no I'm not ProDeath, that would be highly illogical of just about anyone. I just can't in GOOD CONSCIENCE make abortion illegal for several reasons
1) Illegal abortions=dangerous abortions. In some ProLife tainted religion class we were told that abortions now are dangerous and can result in sickness or even death. Gee, what happens when they're no longer being performed in safe clinics or hospitals but in back alleys, backs of vans, peoples homes? Simple MORE people get sick or die because things are no longer sterile.
2) Let's say a woman has one or two illegal abortions. The maximum sentence in the State of Missouri(where I and my one reader live) for a premeditated murder is...Capital Punishment! I smell hypocrisy already. Some have argued, to me, that you should punish the doctor or whoever performed it, to which I point out anyone who hires a hit man also gets punished, usually worse.
3) I know that these are getting to be rare but if a mother would die in child birth leaving kids behind I think, as sad as it is, she should be able to choose to be a mother to the children she's already had instead of dying. Do I think it's the best situation (or even likely)? No, but should it occur a mother should be able to not have a baby.
4) If someone is raped they should be able to have an abortion. I've heard the 'destroying the evidence' argument, but listen: there are seminal fluids, pubic hairs and all sorts of other pieces of evidence the police find in a simple rape kit. Second even if all these other traces of evidence were not present DNA could probably (I'm not sure, but I think we can do genetic testing on unborn babies such as Downs Syndrome testing) be extracted before or (probably less likely) after abortion. And as my brother has said if a fourteen year old girl is raped she shouldn't have to carry the shame around for months. I've heard the "having an abortion causes twice as much pain" argument, but the only people I've heard it from have gotten so many other facts wrong I can't take it at face value anymore, and it disheartens me. I've heard the "there is only a 10% chance a woman can actually get pregnant while being raped" argument too, to which I respond, why yes 10%, doesn't sound like zero and that too has the taintedness of other wrong facts.
5) We don't adopt what kids we do have. I know several families who consider themselves "Pro Life" but haven't adopted a single child who needs a loving stable home. There are some who adopt a BABY from a foreign country, but we have several older children in need of homes in our own country as well who are left in the system until they are turned out on the street at 18. As cute as foreign babies are, we need to be able to provide homes for children in our own country as well.
Back to FOCA. I've heard FOCA is supposedly going to wipe out everything from freedom of conscience laws, sterilization of instruments and other crazy things, all of which is untrue, I'm not gonna go into it myself, the people at Snopes do a much better job= http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/choice.asp
Does it get rid of lots of limitations? Yes, but to me these only seem to be helping people stuck in bad situations. This Link also addresses common issues such as Catholic Hospitals and their stake, parental consent, partial birth abortion, and taxpayer funding. Really worth the read.
This is where I should end with either something witty or something powerful, but I suck at conclusions. They are my weak point.
If you want to argue, feel free. I am always up for a debate, but a few requests: when finding facts try to find them from a third party source, not a religious pamphlet (I'm sorry I just have issues trusting things that have lied to me); use facts not just beliefs (it'll be hard I know, really not trying to be facetious); read the snopes link (so I don't have to end up quoting it back to you anyway). That's about it. Also I don't take kindly to statements such as: "You should be aborted." etcetera. That only shows low brow hypocrisy and I won't have any of it.
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