Bristol Palin pregnant, mom says

Holy crap (or, as Allah says, "Oy"):

The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.
Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin's five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.
"We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us," the Palins' statement said.
"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support," the Palins said.

UPDATE: OK, when in doubt, make a joke. Has Bristol ever been to Gloucester, Mass.? Because I'm thinking she'd fit right in. And as to facing "the responsibilities of adulthood," does she realize she's about this close to causing an Eagletonesque situation that might deliver the country to the tender mercies of Barack Obama?

Look, I've got all the sympathy in the world for young lovers, but great googly-mooglies, Bristol! What were you thinking? I'm going to bet that the father is every bit of 18 years old, and horribly unprepared for his own responsibilities.

I've said for a long time that it's not teenage motherhood that's the problem, but teenage fatherhood. Of course, the best strategy is to keep your britches on and avoid this kind of problem, but if you young girls are going to get yourself knocked up, at least have the good sense to get knocked up by a guy who's old enough to have a decent job.

< / stern fatherly lecture >

UPDATE II: In terms of the "responsibilities of adulthood," I suggest at the AmSpecBlog, Bristol and her boyfriend (the mysterious Levi) need to face a press conference.

UPDATE III: OK, let me be clear that it is not teen motherhood, but unwed motherhood that is the embarrassment here. I have in the past written about my favorite famous teenage mothers (Loretta Lynn and Margaret Beaufort) and also said, "God bless Jamie Lynn Spears!"

Whatever embarrassment there might have been in a hastily-arranged private wedding for Bristol Palin and her boyfriend Levi two or three months ago, would it have been worse than what they're facing now?

Christians need to be concerned about the trend of discouraging marriage in these Romeo-and-Juliet situations. I would call to their attention I Timothy 4, which warns against the "doctrines of devils ... forbidding to marry." Despite worries about the ability of teenage couples to make their way in the world, poverty is not a sin; fornication is.

UPDATE IV: Michelle Malkin recalls Barack Obama's notorious "punished with a baby" remark, and says the media should leave Bristol Palin alone. And I'd agree with that, if Bristol's actions had not caused such woes for her mother, for the Republican Party, and for America.

No, I think Bristol (and her boyfriend) ought to be willing to confront the consequences of their actions. They both certainly knew Sarah Palin was governor of Alaska, and that their affair would be an embarrassment. To plead "privacy" in such a situation simply won't do.

Perhaps I'm so thick-skinned about this because I've got three teenagers (19-year-old daughter and twin 15-year-old boys) and know exactly what I'd expect of them in such a situation. It is not too much for parents to ask that their teenage kids keep their britches on, especially when one of the parents is a public official who might be ruined by such a scandal.

UPDATE V: Little Miss Attila refers to the press as "jackals" and "bottom-feeders." Hey, it's their job, OK? By this time tomorrow, you'll have Levi's full name and biography, you'll know how he met Bristol, etc., etc. You'll read it. You may feel guilty about reading it, but you'll read every word of it.

Will you be grateful to the reporters who dug up those facts? No. Some poor shmuck of a reporter is even now knocking on doors in Alaska, getting rude responses and threatening gestures, in order to satisfy your pathological curiosity, and you diss him as a "jackal." Fine. Don't read the story when Drudge puts a siren on it tomorrow.

But you will read it, won't you? So, who's really the bottom-feeding jackal here?

'Civil disobedience' = buckets of urine

News from Minnesota:

At least five suspected leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee, a self-described anarchist group, were taken to the Hennepin County jail, and another was being sought, said Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher.
On Saturday afternoon, he displayed a number of the confiscated items: a gun, throwing knives, a bow and arrows, flammable liquids, paint, slingshots, rocks and buckets of urine. . . .
Fletcher . . . stressed that he and other agencies had informants planted inside this and other groups for "a long period of time."

(Via Hot Air.) I went to Denver for the DNC, but skipped the RNC in part because I thought a Republican convention would be boring, especially in St. Paul, Minn. Looks like these peace-loving "activists" were intent on proving me wrong.

That the cops in Minnesota had infiltrated the protest groups is hardly surprising; law enforcement used to do this kind of stuff all the time. Undercover infiltration fell out of favor after the COINTELPRO revelations of the '70s, but was revived after the anarchist anti-globalization protesters turned violent at Seattle.

It was obvious to me that the Denver police had infilitrated the protest groups there. Monday afternoon, while walking down 16th Street on our way to PJHQ, we noticed squads of riot police forming up on the street corners. This seemed like an overreaction at the time, but about an hour later, we got word that the protesters at the Civic Center had marched toward 16th Street but been blocked by police. Clearly, the police had advance warning that this unannounced march was in the works, and moved to prevent the protesters from disturbing the diners and shoppers on 16th Street.

Ed Morrissey is right that news of police infiltration has probably generated extreme paranoia among the protesters. This was one of the tactics that busted up the KKK. When I lived in Georgia, I was friends with a high-ranking policeman who told me that if five people showed up for a Klan meeting, three would be police informants and a fourth would be an undercover FBI agent. I suppose the "progressive activists" in Minnesota would object to this comparison, but buckets of urine are hardly the tools of protected First Amendment speech.

Gay celebrity rent-a-womb

If you're a rich guy who wants to sire kids, but you aren't down with that nasty heterosexuality business, the free market has now supplied the solution. The surrogate who bore twins for Ricky Martin, it turns out, was hired through an agency that specializes in such arrangements. It was the third surrogate birth for the 26-year-old rent-a-mom.

Not every vaginaphobic celebrity can do like Clay Aiken, and find a lady friend to help him do through scientific assistance what he loathes to do by natural means. But if you're rich enough, you can hire out a uterus and become a proud gay dad via artificial insemination.

Question: Do gay dads want to be present at the birth? I mean, if they hate and fear ladyparts so much, it must be traumatic to witness the vajayjay doing what nature meant it to do.

Downs Syndrome and maternal age

Just last week, I was chiding a young friend that he ought to marry his girlfriend (with whom I'd set him up last year) so they could start having babies. Playing matchmaker with young folks is an amusing hobby, partly because urging 20-somethings to wed and procreate is so politically incorrect in an era when societal pressure is almost entirely in the other direction.

Young people nowadays are told they should concentrate on establishing their careers rather than starting families while they're young. But the careerist/materialist path, however sensible, strikes me as far less romantic than the impulsive let's-go-see-the-preacher approach. And as a Southerner, I can't resist the old-fashioned appeal of "Paint the shotgun white, Pa -- it's going to be a formal wedding!"

However, while I was researching my last post (about those idiotic left-wing Trig Palin rumors), I noticed that a commenter at Michelle Malkin's blog had linked something that puts the weight of science behind my old-fashioned romantic ideas of young love. It's a chart correlating the frequency of Downs Syndrome with maternal age, and it is a powerful argument against postponing motherhood.

For women ages 20-24, the frequency of Downs Syndrome is 1 in every 1,400 live births. By age 35, however, the frequency is 1 in every 350 births -- a quadrupling of risk. At age 39, the frequency is 1/140 -- 10 times the risk at age 20-24.

Risk is not certainty, of course. My wife and I have six children, the three youngest of whom are all healthy, even though they were born when my wife was 35, 37 and 39. Downs Syndrome, however, is only one of the serious complications associated with advanced maternal age. Indeed, waiting to have a baby increases the likelihood that you'll never have babies at all.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine reports that infertility affects 7% of women ages 20-24, but 15% of women ages 30-34 and 22% of women ages 35-39. In other words, a delaying motherhood by 10 years doubles a woman's risk of infertility, while a delay of 15 years triples the risk.

Clearly, nature favors the young when it comes to motherhood. Thus, I claim scientific support for my advocacy of that wild-and-crazy romantic notion that young folks ought to get married and make babies. So ladies, next time that fellow starts lovin' up on you, just whisper in his ear, "Let's do something scientific!"

Boycotting Sullivan?

Ace sent an e-mail to "heavy hitters in the right-leaning respectable blogosphere" to suggest a boycott of Andrew Sullivan. See-Dubya got the e-mail. I've checked my inbox, but am not on the list, so I guess I'm at liberty to link Sullivan in explaining what this is all about.

Sully repeatedly gave vent to, and defended, the horrid and baseless speculation -- apparently originating with a DKos vermin -- that Sarah Palin's fifth child, Trig, was actually her grandchild, having been born to Palin's teenage daughter, Bristol. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

So, in no fewer than nine blog entries, this contributor to The Atlantic Monthly pumped oxygen into one of the most bizarre and disgusting conspiracy theories ever to emerge from the fetid swamps of the Leftosphere. This prompts Ace to engage in his own theorizing:

Since we're airing "uncomfortable theories" of a medical type here which need to be explored, I doubt there is anyone on the blogosphere who hasn't wondered -- frequently -- if Sullivan is suffering from AIDS-related dementia.
Ugly, yes, but we're all thinking the same thing; and as we're now apparently free to speculate about such ugly things, I see no reason why Sullivan should be further shielded.
He's gone f---ing bananas, due to AIDS or steroids or other reasons, and if we're not observing a minimum level of politeness and civility anymore -- if innocent 16 year old girls are now valid targets -- I see no reason to continue extending the courtesy
of polite silence to Sullivan.

Yeah. I guess this suspicion has been in the back of a lot of people's minds for a while, and "the courtesy of polite silence" has generally prevented other bloggers from wondering aloud whether Sullivan's erratic moods might be related in some way to his illness.

Nietzsche famously went mad due to syphilis, and while AIDS-related dementia is a less well-known phenomenon, I very well remember Sullivan's 7,000-word paean to the joys of testosterone therapy. Given that he was resorting to such exotic treatments eight years ago, heaven knows what manner of mood-altering medications he might be using now.

In light of Sullivan's indulgence of the Trig Palin conspiracy theory, however, he clearly has drifted far afield from the sober judgment he exhibited as editor of the New Republic 15 years ago. There was never a shred of credible evidence for that cheap smear -- akin to idiot rumors of a lesbian affair between Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton -- and thus no reason why any journalist should acknowledge it, except to denounce it.

Of course, I'm not a "heavy hitter" and probably not "respectable," either, and I once got an "Yggy" nomination from Sully, so I might be more sympathetic than some others on the Right. Sullivan has written at length about Oakeshott and the importance of humility in conservative thought, and therefore ought to be humble enough to admit that he was wrong in allowing himself to go wading into the DKos muck. And in making such an admission, perhaps he will have cause to reflect on exactly why he's drifted so far afield.

Having done my own share of drifting over the years, I am wary of the notion of irredeemable errors. A Christian ought to consider that when he is chastised, there is always a reason, no matter how unfair the chastisement seems at the time. And an admission of one's own faults does not justify one's enemies. God used the heathen Babylonians to chastise Israel, but this did not signify God's favor toward heathenism, neither did it ultimately exempt Babylon from judgment, nor did it mean that God had broken His promise to Israel.

Sullivan has done wrong, and ought to make amends. But I am too great a debtor to grace to suppose that he is beyond hope of redemption.

UPDATE: Great day in the morning! Sully's fairly sane, compared to some of the DKos/DUmmies whose wild conspiratorial fantasies Ace has unearthed now. It's all a plot by Karl Rove, you see . . .

Sarah Palin: Ordinary American

Heather Mac Donald of City Journal scoffed at John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as "playing the identity-politics game," but Mac Donald's colleague Lisa Schiffren puts her finger on why the choice is so popular with the GOP rank-and-file:

In the first 36 hours after McCain announced his pick, $7 million in new contributions poured in online. This isn't because Palin is making history as the first woman on a GOP ticket. It's because of the type of woman and politician that she is. She’s a normal person, a mother and wife, who entered politics in 1992 by running for city council in Wasilla, Alaska to oppose tax hikes.

In short, Sarah Palin is an Ordinary American -- a graduate of the University of Idaho, rather than an Ivy League college; a high-school basketball player, not a windsurfer; a beauty-pageant contestant, not lawyer; a member of the PTA, not NOW; a hunter, not an environmentalist. Palin clearly identifies with, and shares the interests of, the middle-class majority, rather than the elite.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

'My parents went to see John McCain . . .'

. . . and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"?

This is Keagan Powers of Gahanna, Ohio. His mom and dad (my in-laws) took Keagan to see the McCain-Palin event in Dayton on Friday, but due to overcrowding were not able to get inside. This is news because it shows (a) the GOP ticket's getting overflow crowds, and (b) my nephew's so cute.

August: Another record month

The monthly traffic report: August yielded more than 73,000 visits, exceeding the combined total of the two previous months (June 27.8K + July 45.1K = 72.9K). The month-to-month traffic growth was about 38%.

Once again, thanks to Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Ace of Spades and other big bloggers for linkage that pushed the peaks. The "lows get higher" factor -- residual traffic to older posts building the "base" traffic so that the Sitemeter doesn't return to the "zero hour" -- is also noticeable.

After 571 visits on Aug. 2, the next-lowest day was 806 on Aug. 15, and every day after Aug. 17 was over 1,000 -- with an extra boost to the end of the month because of people Googling for "Sarah Palin bikini pics." In all, there were 26 days over 1,000+ traffic in August, and 12 days of 2,000+ traffic.

Video: Thursday in Denver

Got this footage while at the DNC ...

P.E.W.P.

Jason is good at playing dumb. Too good?



(Via Hot Air.)

CNN poll: Obama 49%, McCain 48%

I don't believe that only 3% of voters are undecided, but that's what Time/CNN is reporting. Given this is, according to Mark Halperin, the first national poll conducted entirely since Palin was named McCain's running mate, it's worth noting simply because it indicates that either Obama got no convention bounce or else the Palin pick has offset it.

But "indicates" is the operative word. This is just one poll, and a weekend poll, at that. Let the dust settle with Palin on the ticket, let them finish the GOP convention, and then let's watch the polls for a week or two thereafter. Check the daily tracking polls from Rasmussen and Gallup reported on Thursday, Sept. 11 -- the first day with three full weekdays of polling after the RNC -- and that will be a good measure of where the race stands as the main part of the campaign season begins. And then wait for battleground state polls after that.

UPDATE: "Nerves of tin" Beta-male pessimist Allahpundit sees gloom in these numbers and other omens. The Boss should give him a pep talk: "Get a grip, man! Have you no faith in the evil racist moron voters of America?"

UPDATE II: His "government name" is Sean Combs, but he's working real hard to make sure that Maverick monopolizes the evil racist moron vote.

Thank you, liberals

To all the Democrats on TV dismissing Sarah Palin as an inexperienced lightweight ("completely unqualified," to quote Paul Begala), I just want to say, thanks for helping lower expectations.

Now, if she says anything halfway intelligent in her debate with Joe Biden, she'll be hailed as the next Margaret Thatcher.

You stay classy, Joe Conason!

E-mail to Team Maverick

Just sent this e-mail to McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb:

Dear Michael:
About two-thirds of the hits on my blog today have been from people Googling for bikini pictures of Sarah Palin.
Ace of Spades and See-Dubya report the same phenonmenon.
Not meaning to be disrespectful -- extremely irreverent yes, disrespectful no -- but I figure it's only a matter of time before someone digs up a swimwear competition photo from the 1984 Miss Alaska contest and gets it online. So allow me to suggest that the McCain-Palin campaign just go ahead and get the candidate to provide them with such a photo, and release it to right-wing bloggers . . . beginning with me, since I'm the guy that had the moxie to ask.
JPEG format is preferred.
Sincerely,
Robert Stacy McCain
"The Other McCain"
http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/

No sooner had I sent that request than I got an e-mail from a left-wing blogger who had posted this (highly skilled) Photoshop picture:

You see what I'm talking about? Welcome to the New Media age. If we don't have real Sarah Palin bikini pictures, somebody's bound to gin up fake Sarah Palin bikini pictures. So if the McCain campaign doesn't produce those photos of Palin lounging seaside in Daytona pretty soon, this thing could spin out of control. Just trying to be helpful.

UPDATE: Ex-Pat Texan tries an experiment with "Sarah Palin Naked Photos" and reports success. I don't think we need completely stark-raving naked-as-a-jaybird nude, just a nice thong bikini shot from a vacation in some tropical locale. A spring-break-in-Cozumel type of thing.

UPDATE II: For reasons unknown, a Memeorandum thread linked this post to Jeff Goldstein's thorough fisking of anti-Palin memes, which is worth reading.

UPDATE III: Another experimenter, Pirate's Cove, gets results with the "Sarah Palin Bikini" trick. His traffic for the weekend of Aug. 23-24 was 1,655 visits; his traffic for the weekend of Aug. 30-31 was 2,158 -- a traffic increase of 30.4% in one week. So, clearly, there is a market demand for these photos, and it would behoove the GOP, as the party of free enterprise, to respond to this demand. C'mon, Goldfarb: Do you want the Libertarians to beat you to the punch by releasing photos of Bob Barr in a Speedo?

Ivy League inspiration

Weird news from New Haven:

It's a profound honor for a graduate of Jacksonville (Ala.) State University to learn that he has inspired reactionary protest slogans at Yale University. Should this right-wing campus movement succeed, I might go down in history as the Timothy Leary of the counter-revolution.

And because the counter-revolution is all about mindless greed, don't forget to order your "Equality Is For Ugly Losers" T-shirts.

Gustav postpones RNC

Just saw the news conference where RNC officials announced that they are canceling all Monday's convention business in St. Paul except a 2-hour meeting to conclude necessary business.

Josh Marshall: "Of course, it's hard not to see this as political posturing." Right. When everything is political, everything is political.

Geez, some people need to get a life.

UPDATE: Ignoring the weather is an old habit of mine. My wife can't sleep at night unless she sees the next day's weather forecast on the news, but my attitude is, "If it rains, it rains." And I particularly ignore forecasts of catastrophic weather. People in the D.C. region tend to freak completely out at the approach of any weather system that might possibly contain a single snowflake. Not me. I take pride in never having missed a day of work because of snow.

All this by way of explaining why I've ignored Hurricane Gustav's approach to the Gulf Coast until a few hours before it is expected to make landfall. If you live in a coastal area of the Southeast, in late summer you will be bothered by the occasional hurricane. Beyond the coastal areas, however, a hurricane just means a day or two of heavy rain. Being from Atlanta, I grew up watching TV news as hurricanes slam Florida every year, with occasional hits on other Gulf states or maybe the Carolinas.

Hurricanes are nothing unusual, and they don't really affect the lives of most Americans. But since Katrina, because Democrats blamed Republican for the destruction of New Orleans, hurricanes have become politicized. And so now we have Michael Moore writing an "open letter to God" about Gustav, and going on TV to make a complete ass of himself:



I object to this, and not merely because I object to anything that gives Michael Moore an excuse to haul his fat ass out of his crumb-strewn Barcalounger and into a TV studio.

In a free society, not everything is political.

When you start politicizing the weather, you really need to rethink your priorities. Despite the Chicken Little "storm of the century" response of Ray Nagin to the approach of Gustav, the overhwhelming likelihood is that Gustav will not hit New Orleans, will not cause wholesale devastation, and will not result in the need for a massive humanitarian relief effort.

This means that Republicans have, in all probability, canceled Monday's prime-time convention activities for no good reason, thus ceding to liberals the argument that even the weather is political. The besetting sins of the GOP are not greed and indifference, but cowardice and stupidity.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin: "God is not on your side, gloating sleazeballs."

Video: Maverick defends Palin pick

John McCain says Sarah Palin looks good in a bikini is "the change we need in Washington."

"Twenty percent of our energy comes from the state of Alaska, and energy is obviously one of the key issues for our nation's security. . . .
"[S]he's been to Kuwait. She's been over there. She's been with her troops. The National Guard that she commands, who have been over there and had the experience, I'm proud of her knowledge of these challenges and issues. . . . When she was taking tough positions against her own party, Senator Obama was voting present 130 times in the state legislature. On every tough issue, whatever it was, she was taking them on. That's the kind of judgment that I'm confident that we need in Washington. And she looks hot in a bikini, too."

Maybe I added that last part.

MoDo on Palin

A vice-presidential candidate who has "never even been on Meet the Press"? The horror!

Sources say . . .

TBSH notes that Alan Wolfe is apparently using Andrew Sullivan as a source for claiming that Sarah Palin named her 14-year-old daughter Willow after a character on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" -- except that "Buffy" didn't debut until Willow Palin was 3 years old.

Reihan Salam:

Attention all those who want to defeat McCain-Palin: please ridicule Sarah Palin. Five kids with silly white trash names! She was the mayor of a small town! Ha! I mean, look at her -- she must be dumb! And where did she go to school? . . . Her mere existence is an insult to women. She eats moose, she rides a snowmobile, and she supports drilling.

Don Surber invokes the Gretchen Wilson song "Redneck Woman," which fits in real well with Palin trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police. Where I come from, it's not really a divorce until somebody gets their car keyed and at least one of the parties is under a restraining order.

BTW, 70% of my hits in the last hour were visiting the "Sarah Palin bikini pics" post. C'mon, Steve Schmidt, e-mail me those JPEGs. I protect my sources.

Zogby: McCain 47%, Obama 45%

Big grain of salt, due to the online methodology of this Zogby poll, but . . .

Republican John McCain's surprise announcement Friday of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate -- some 16 hours after Democrat Barack Obama's historic speech accepting his party’s presidential nomination -- has possibly stunted any Obama convention bump, the latest Zogby Interactive flash poll of the race shows. . . .
Overall, 52% said the selection of Palin as the GOP vice presidential nominee helps the Republican ticket. . . .
The interactive survey shows that 22% of those voters who supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in their primary elections or caucus earlier this year are now supporting John McCain.

The timing of the veep announcement was perfect, in terms of stopping the cable news networks from endlessly re-rolling footage of Obama's acceptance speech at the Barackopolis. And the choice of Palin was newsworthy enough to dominate the news cycle all weekend. Even if much of the coverage was negative, coverage is coverage, and it's likely that Palin will still be on the front-page headlines Monday morning.

Alabama 34, Clemson 10

Zero rushing yards. Think about that.

The University of Alabama's defense held No. 9 Clemson to zero rushing yards Saturday night in the Georgia Dome, as the Crimson Tide opened its seccond season under coach Nick Saban with an impressive 34-10 victory over the Tigers.

ESPN's Ivan Maisel:

If Alabama continues to play as well as it played Saturday night, the Crimson Tide will play in the Georgia Dome again this season -- in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game.

Alabama had 259 rushing yards, and Tide QB John Parker Wilson completed 22 of 30 passes for 180 yards and two touchdowns.

Being an Alabama fan means that as long as the Tide has a zero in the losses column, you're thinking national championship. With 14 freshmen in the two-deep lineup, 'Bama is very inexperienced -- they committed too many penalties last night, typical of a young squad -- but against Clemson they showed the kind of physical dominance that inspires expectations.