ive determined that when the media (and it's not just celebrity gossip, but they generally are the worst) is obsessed with who's pregnant and who's not, they are really more focused on who's having sex. like with jennifer lopez and ashlee simpson. is she or isnt she was more about the sex than the fetus.

Traister's is an interesting perspective, and she's right, sex is easy to understand. But unfortunately, as Ruth Marcus in the Wash Post writes (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/01/AR2008090102305.html) the reason this is noteworthy is because it puts the abstinence only platform of the Far Right in sharp relief.

John McCain voted to require parental consent for teens to receive contraception. Because teens rarely bring up sex with parents (does anyone, of any age enjoy talking about sex with their parents???) John McCain's policies increase the likelihood of Bristol Palins. Most of them don't have the support of the Republican Party.

The pregnancy of Palin's daughter is an absolutely appropriate and necessary discussion to have at this time, particularly because we have yet again another "do as I say and not as I do" political figure. Although a tad bit "racy" and perhaps adding a Jerry Springer component to the campaign, Palin clearly has an abstinence-only public policy stance. With that, we must call into question if Palin's judgment is appropriate considering her staunch political stance-which infringes on my freedom and better judgment-and the state of affairs in her own household. As much as we may need to leave her to her own family affairs, then social conservatives such as Palin should cease treading on me.

oops, sorry 4 the triple post folks...

I caught hot second of this debate as i blearily turned on the news this morning. What i found most compelling was that, immediately following the report that Palin confirmed her 17 year old's pregnancy, the assertion that the "child" will marry the baby's father. Which obviously makes the whole thing ok. A seventeen year old girl MARRYING another child is more alarming to me than a teenager dealing with an adult decision (eg abortion, adoption, raising the child). Its amazing to me that, even now, marriage seems to be the answer to everything.

Sarah Palin isn't Hillary Clinton

As much as I agree that the media is constantly distracted by the newest bit of fluff, this news has at least brought to light Governor Palin's stances on abstinence only education and contraceptive availability.

Not to mention once more highlighting how far to the fringe right she is on women's issues.

Learn the differences, and vote smart.

www.SarahPalinISNTHillaryClinton.com

Obviously Sarah Palin isn't Hilary Clinton. I'm shocked that there's the need for a website pointing out the differences.

I'm seriously disappointed that we're talking about this woman's daughter and the disappointing, though ironic, issues in her family. I mean, there's so much to bash about her, and to drag her daughter into this seems like overkill.

I understand that teen sex is a fixture in society, but I could care less about her daughters pregnancy. The reason why I can't stand her has nothing to do with this small hypocrisy.

The issue with Palin, just as with the various sex scandal plagued GOPers, is their hypocrisy. They want praise for their choice to carry a child to term, when their own stated beliefs say this is not a choice. Palin wants this praise for both her and her daughter's choice, when she thinks everyone else shouldn't have a choice, even if they're pregnant as a result of rape or incest. She thinks (as McCain does too, according to his statements about his family) that these harsh beliefs should be the law of the land, applied to everybody except their family.

In Palin's case it also points up the failure (also shown by study after study) of the abstinence-only sex education she insists be the only choice available to everybody; she wants this demonstrated failure to be forced on others.

It is pretty obvious, IMO, why the GOP chose McCain and Palin. She's a decoy really. Didn't the Republican machine use a similar tactic in electing Bush? We can all agree that he is a mental midget and puppet boy for the neocon agenda. McCain is probably smarter than Bush, and is just as happy to do what he's told (by Cheney, Rove & Co.) If McCain is elected and dies during his term (pretty freakin' likely) and Palin becomes President, don't you think it is the PERFECT scenario for Cheney, Rove & Co. to play Puppeteers for another 4-8 years to continue their nefarious plans for phucking the world in the arse with our pants on?

Also, for the sheeple on the fence, doesn't it look so PROGRESSIVE and NICE that the Republicans chose a woman as their VP nominee? You know, since the Democrats chose a black guy and all...Republicans have to TRY and stay hip, let's get a woman on the ticket. (Snark, snark!) And better yet a woman with a kid who is pregnant, a lot of people can sympathize with that! And she has a kid with Downs, isn't it nice that she had the baby anyway, she MUST be a good person then! And they know how Americans are obsessed with the superficiality of it all...it's the Celebrity Politics/Fox News way.

I'd want to see McCain's "choices" for cabinet positions. That outta be what makes us shiver in our boots, kids. But we won't, because we're too obsessed with the superficiality of glamour politics. The VP should have strengths that a President may lack. I'm sorry but how much political sass can you have being a Baby Mill/Beauty Queen/Governor of freakin Alaska!!!?? (No offense, Alaskans). ANWR will be open for business quicker than Larry Craig's bathroom stall!!

After 8+ years of this bullshizzle, I really don't get why people don't see that the Republican strategy is and has always been distract and attack, then divide the booty amongst its own.

**Stepping off snarky soapbox**

If Palin wasn't all about abstinence-only education, I would care less that her teenage daughter is pregnant. It's not that uncommon after all. It's just when I hear things like that it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside because it shows how effective her brilliant abstinence-only education is. Don't give condoms or birth control to your kids and they won't have sex, right? Wrong! Oops! Fortunately for her, she's only pregnant and doesn't have any diseases.

@Tammy: I'm guessing that you don't actually know she doesn't have diseases. It's not like her STD test results (if indeed she has had a test at all) would be part of the announcement.

Everyone else: Her daughter's pregnancy has nothing nothing to do with her policy. You don't know that she didn't tell her daughter about condoms and other forms of protection. You don't know how she raises her daughter, or how they interact day-to-day, or under what circumstances this girl got pregnant. This really is none of our business. Take apart her politics, but don't judge her by the consequence of her daughter's actions.

That said, the marriage thing is a little creepy. I know of only one couple who got married as teenagers (well, one was eighteen) that have had a successful marriage. I know many more who are, or will be, divorced. I don't think I could even condone a seventeen-year-old girl to get married to anyone, period. A baby is enough of a premature commitment.

I second the comments that Palin is a repulsively see-through stand-in for Clinton and that her daughter's pregnancy IS relevant; if she can use her disabled son to make herself into a pro-life warrior, than her daughter's welfare and how it relates to her mother's ideology are fair game as well. It isn't about Bristol--it's about a Dominionist lunatic like Palin.

They're going to make Bristol into a political football too--the living cliche of American teens being (absent) dads and barefoot and pregnant by prom represent "family values" if they come from "good Christian" families.

Either unwanted and unplanned pregnancy represent a crack in "personal responsibility" among Republicans and "life is precious" till it's out of the womb, or we're going to treat unplanned-for/unwanted children and pregnancies as a social and economic problem.

I am livid. I am even more livid because the media seems to forgive GOP foibles quickly, even when it shows it relates to policymakers' hypocrisy and abuses of power...Mark Foley, Mike Huckabee, Larry Craig...

Hurray for the "party of life" and "family values!"

I just don't understand why we're not supposed to call out hypocrisy, which this clearly is. I wouldn't care if Palin's grandma sniffed glue, bcause Palin's not a warrior for the death penalty for glue-sniffing. But when you push for abstinence education while you can't even get your kids to behave, you're clearly full of shit.

We need to stop playing nice or we'll never win. Democrats are, for the most part, less hypocritical, because they're not moral crusaders - the moral beliefs of Democrats are mostly based on personal privacy and secular ethics, as opposed to medieval religious, nose-in-your-business crap. Republican hypocrisy is a low-hanging fruit, and I don't see why not to take it.

Hey, I don't know if this fits in here, but have any of you seen William Salatan's really shitty article on Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2199086/

Basically he names all of the Presidential and VP canidate's daughters between the ages of 17-30, from 1964 to date (by his count 37) and states, "An unintended pregnancy rate of 6 to 7 percent, in a population of 37 women, means two to three pregnancies per year." Followed by, "the notion that none of these young women got knocked up before their parents' nominations or elections is—pardon the term—almost inconceivable."

This infuriates me. Here is some math, to show the stupidity of his argument. I am a 28 year old woman, which means I have 10 years of possibly being pregnant and in his age range. Since, according to William Salatan, the probablity of a well educated and formerly well off(grad school) young woman like myself NOT getting pregnant is 94% (100%-6%). Then the probability I have not conceived in this 10 year period, 0.94 ^ 10, or 53.86%. Now I know three other women who are in identical situations, 28 years old, well educated, fairly well off, no babies, etc. So between the four of us, two of us MUST have had abortions (4*0.5386 ~ 2.1). RIDICULOUS!!! These kind of statistics do not apply well to small data sets. URG!!

I hate misuse of statistics almost as much as I hate the maligning of non-pregnant pres-cannidate and vp-cannidate daughters! Don't try to make their non-pregnant statuses an implication that they must have had abortions. This is just a weak deflection on the fact that his vp-cannidate daughter is pregnant. Isn't there an editor over there at Slate?

Again, not sure if this really fits here. Hope you don't mind.