Palin the Pro-Choice Candidate

Sarah Palin is pro-choice.

With all the political rhetoric and ideological shorthand being thrown around some people may have missed this. She believes that women should have the right to choose representatives close to home who can decide law and public policy, not nine judges in Washington picked by the President. She supports their right to choose, even if they choose differently than she would, since she would like women voters to exercise their right by choosing representatives who will protect all innocent human life.

That’s because she believes that women temporarily housed and fed inside someone else’s body should have the opportunity to spend their lives making all sorts of choices, even though all of them will make good choices and bad choices, and will have to live with the consequences of their choices. She holds the view that they should have those opportunities even if their father was a really bad person. Some people actually think that one man’s choice – even though that choice led to creation of their daughter’s life – should take away her right to ever make one. Fortunately Sarah Palin doesn’t hold such an extreme view. She doesn’t think a child should be punished for their parent’s crime, and especially not with the death penalty.

For those men or women who will have limited choices in life because their genes have limited some of their abilities, Sarah wants to protect their right to choose as well.

Sarah Palin also realises that everyone has their choices limited by law. Everyone that endangers innocent human life uses their body. She’s not pro-choice when it comes to gang violence. She’s not pro-choice when it comes to armed robbery. She’s not pro-choice when it comes to drunk driving (even though her husband was once charged with it 22 year ago, before they were married).

Some women are saying they want the government to keep its hands off their wombs. It seems to me that Mrs Palin is perfectly happy to keep the government’s hands (or anyone else’s for that matter) off their wombs. It’s only when someone starts putting their hands on it that anything bad happens. Sarah definitely has a hands-off policy when it comes to wombs. That’s the only way to protect the unique human life inside it.

Without a judge-imposed law, both Sarah Palin and Joe Biden know that there will be more women in the United States to make more choices. That’s why Joe Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has opposed the appointment of judges who would limit their own perogative to choose for the American people. He knows that as many as half of the 4,000 people each day in America who permanently lose their right to choose are women. He knows that many women voters in many states will want to protect the right of every human to choose and he want to continue to keep them from having that right.

That’s why I’m supporting Sarah Palin – the pro-choice candidate.

Joe Biden’s Disabled Thinking

I’ve been quite busy with work, so I haven’t had a chance to write anything the last couple of days. I had ideas about which subjects to broach, but having just seen this story, I know now what I want to say.

At a campaign stop in Columbia, Missouri, Joe Biden said: “I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy … and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well, guess what, folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”

This was clearly aimed at Sarah Palin, because John McCain supports stem cell research. I don’t agree with him, and neither does Sarah, but he does. But it exposes Biden’s attempt to appeal to emotion without any regard for logic or reason. Biden assumes that to care about children with birth defects, it is necessary to choose doing something about them as the ultimate moral action, trumping all others.

Biden is saying that if you really care about birth defects, you cannot believe that the human life of the embryo is sacred. Only people who believe in the disposability of embryonic life can call themselves caring.

Biden also ignores the fact that stem cell research will do nothing for those parents who already have a child born with a birth defect. It will not ease their difficulty one bit. So why would someone who is going to “work in dealing with parents who have both the joy … and the difficulty of raising a child” with birth defects have to support stem cell research? Biden is only playing on the ignorance of his audience.

And Sarah Palin does not opposed stem cell research. She only opposes embryonic research. There is a lot of research that is ongoing using the stem cells of adults. After all, we all produce stem cells. Why doesn’t Biden mention that?

Is this the best attack he can make – to combine logical fallacies and factual errors? Is this what Sarah Palin is up against?

I thought Joe Biden might put some substance to Obama’s empty platitudes. I thought we might see something more than smoke and mirrors- something more than unsupportable policies built on the sandy foundation of emotional appeal and the politics of envy. Is it really any surprise that the Republican ticket is moving ahead in the polls?

Albert Mohler on Trig Palin and the Value of Life

Back in May of this year, Sarah Palin was the subject of a blog post by Dr Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Mohler mentions then that she is often mentioned as a potential running mate for John McCain, so perhaps he was less surprised than I was when this came to pass.

However, this is not the subject or focus of his post. Rather it is about the Palin’s youngest child, Trig. It is worth a few moments of your time.

School’s Out For Summer

Well, as far as the pupils are concerned.

I have to go back tomorrow for a few hours. I need to make an appearance at least. I can’t actually do anything in my room, because it is being used for a first aid course all day.

Because the Unnamed Woman had to go out of town today, I had to get a ride to school today with a colleague who also lives in Hooterville. Unfortunately, she couldn’t take me all the way home – something I didn’t know until she was about to drop me off on the opposite side of the city. All of a sudden I was stranded some miles from home. It is a good thing I didn’t bring my usual bags with me today and only had my lunch box.

I had to walk for a mile to get to a cashpoint so I could get money for a taxi. I’ve checked the route on Google maps to confirm this. Not bad for a disabled person with significant mobility limitations. It was another 1.7 miles to my house. The taxi cost me £7, about as much as it costs me to commute all the way to work and back each day. It took me nearly an hour from the time I was dropped off until I got home.

Local Government at Its Worst

The world is full of jobworths. It’s really not that surprising when someone with a uniform and a limited secondary education meets a quota by some sort of oppressive official action, usually involving an undeserved and out-of-proportion fine.

Jean Raine is 82-year-old and suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. She was feel ill and taking a rest in her car. The car was legally parked in a handicap bay. She has a disabled parking badge. But, oops, it was the wrong way up. Perhaps not surprising when you are 82, have Parkinson’s, and have been taken ill. Still, in a world of semi-literate, quota-driven jobsworths, it is no excuse.

The only care taken by the parking attendant was to quietly put the ticket on the windscreen, so as not to disturb Miss Raine. After all, had he done that, she would have turned the badge over and proven that it was, in fact, fully valid. Then he would have to find another unlucky driver to ticket.

But like I said, this bit is not surprising. But when faced with this sort of action, sometimes it is necessary to appeal to responsible and rational authorities. Miss Raine and her partner 88-year-old Martin Westgarth (who was shopping while Miss Raine rested) appealed to the South Lakeland Council in Cumbria. The council rejected their appeal. Why? “Guidance notes issued with the badge and parking disc clearly state that it should be clearly and correctly displayed at all times.”

You can read the full story in the Daily Telegraph.

I think it would be nice if people across Britain let South Lakeland Council know how terrible their policies are. The cabinet member of the council responsible for parking is Mrs Hilary Stephenson. If you click the link you will find all of her contact details, including her email address.

Busking

One thing London has to offer is a variety of buskers. Just about every Tube station has one. Some have more.

The legality of it all is quite confusing.  There was a blind man playing an accordion just down from a sign saying buskers would be fined £200. Clearly he didn’t see the sign. At another station there was a painted (or carefully tiled) semi-circle area on the floor which seemed to be created for busking. I favour the latter approach, as busking really is a London institution. Do people really complain?

The quality ranges from almost professional to atonally bizarre. At one station a hip-hopper with a wireless mike started singing about the kids making up lyrics as we walked by and followed us for a short distance. Then there was the man with no legs who played one note on a pipe of some kind. He just tooted the one note at random intervals.

Disability did seem to be a recurring theme. I suppose that when opportunity or academic inclination hasn’t offset physical handicap, begging is a reasonable recourse. And buskers are actually putting some effort into their work – or in the case of the tooting double amp, at least making a noise to get noticed.

And there are those who seem to be making a lifestyle choice. Two or three times a day, you come across the really talented. These are the ones that should be playing in a band somewhere. Maybe they do in the evenings.

The most memorable busker I have ever heard – in fact, the only one I can remember from more than three days ago – was a Afro-Caribbean man playing classical music on a steel drum at the bottom of an escalator. It was in 1992. I don’t remember the Tube station.  He was playing Für Elise by Beethoven.

Hobbling

Well, I tried walking today. I was in bad enough shape that my wife wanted me to stay home, and she never wants me to stay hom. But against all advice, I hobbled to my car and drove to school and really hobbled to my classroom. I lasted one period – my GCSE History group with an important revision lesson before tomorrow’s exam – before I hobbled back to my car and home.

I won’t be going in tomorrow at the very least. My little venture into the walking world caused significant heretofore unseen bruising. I hope I don’t lose the rest of the week. We’ll have to see how it goes.

It’s Not All Bad

They say if you can’t say anything nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all. This is clearly a policy to which I rarely adhere, as my wife if often keen to point out. About no topic is this more true than the National Health Service.

As I recently noted in a comment to another post, I have had good orthopedic (or orthopaedic, depending on where you are reading this) care. I know that when it comes to this specialty (or speciality, again depending on where you are) I am winner in the postcode lottery, but there you go. To that I would have to add emergency care.

This afternoon I tripped in the kitchen and didn’t have the sleeve of my prosthesis pulled up. As I fell forward, I left it behind. All 14 stone came down on my stump. (Yes, 14 stone – I ate, as they say in this country, all the pies.) I almost passed out from the pain.

My wife called an ambulance. They arrived very promptly and provided very good care in getting me to hospital. I don’t think this was affected by me telling them that not only had I formerly been an ambulance driver (as a volunteer during my college days) , but also a lawyer.

Once in the A&E (as they call the ER here), they put some ice on it to keep the swelling down and gave me some pain medicine. After time for both to work, I was wheeled into X-ray and within minutes I was looking at the pictures on a computer screen with the advantage of digital zoom. There appears to be no fracture.

I was home within two hours of the incident. Even though the bone appears to be intact, I can’t take any weight or even pressure on it. Hopefully I will be able to walk by Monday.

Paid to Misbehave

Figures released from the Department for Work and Pensions have revealed more of the nature of the Welfare State. As reported in The Times:

120,000 adults aged 18 to 34 have been on incapacity benefit or severe disablement allowance for five years or more.

A further 130,000 have been on the benefit for at least two years.

An analysis of the figures for May 2007 shows that more than a third of the 289,150 adults aged 25 to 34 have been on benefits for more than five years . . .

A spokesman for the DWP said that 300,000 of the 504,000 young people claiming sickness benefit last May had mental and behavioural disorders.

Yes, they are claiming sickness benefit because they can’t behave. With the sort of young people that are leaving schools now, we can only expect these numbers to increase. Kids will have even less motivation to buckle down and do their work – they can be as disruptive as they want to be – even get thrown out when school governors can resist the pressure of the Government to keep them in the classroom – and they will still get an income from the State.

Nasty

I don’t care what you think about the conflict in Iraq and the part played by US or British forces, some things are just beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour. In the US there are people like Fred Phelps and their protests at funerals. But at least they have a cause, however repulsive and misguided.

In the UK, who needs a cause? It is just enough to be nasty.

From the Daily Telegraph:

Injured soldiers who lost their limbs fighting for their country have been driven from a swimming pool training session by jeering members of the public.