President Barack Obama is endorsing nuclear energy like never before, trying to win over Republicans and moderate Democrats on climate and energy legislation.
For a president in political trouble, the State of the Union address seems the ideal launch site to tweak one’s agenda. But not so for President Obama.
In 2008, 17-year-old Bristol Palin was thrust into the spotlight by her mother’s selection as John McCain’s sassy sidekick. Forced to travel the country, modeling her baby bump, with her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend at her side, Bristol found herself remade in her mother’s image. Sure, she’d tossed aside all the teachings about abstinence and purity and whatnot, but at least the part about not using contraception had kicked in, and, as she boasts on a recent cover of magazine, along side her mother, she’s glad she “chose life.”
But it wasn’t enough for Bristol (or for her mother, anyway) to have her awkward fifteen minutes of fame and then fade back into Wasilla obscurity with the challenges of being a young single mother (albeit, a young single mother with a wealthy family, whose mother’s lawyer helped her create to “provide lobbying, public relations, and political consulting services.” Ah, every teen mother’s dream.)
Last year, Bristol for the Candies Foundation.
“I am so happy to have this opportunity to work with The Candie’s Foundation on spreading the message of teen pregnancy prevention. I feel that I could be a living example of the consequences of teen pregnancy.” Palin added, “If I can prevent even one girl from getting pregnant, I will feel a sense of accomplishment.”
Candies is the company that purveys hooker-wear for teens with mixed messages like its “Be Sexy Tees” line. (Get it? Be a sexy tease? Funny!) The tee shirts, which come in a range of sizes, from skin-tight to super skin-tight, say, “I’m sexy enough…to keep you waiting.” (Get it? She’s sexy, but since she’s a “good girl,” she won’t give it up. Except that, statistically speaking, she probably will.)
Candies wants to help fight teen pregnancy, but not in any way that might actually, you know, work. Its whole strategy is to tell teens to wait. Wear sexy clothes, but don’t have sex. Just don’t have sex. Its page of “tips” are all about sex — not safe sex, mind, you, but how most teens who end up pregnant hadn’t really considered the consequences of sex. So, you see, just don’t do it, and then you won’t have that problem.
Naturally, Bristol is the perfect spokesperson for this campaign. Because even though she had sex, and we all know it, there’s no law that says she can’t pretend she didn’t have sex and that her vows of abstinence won’t be true in the future. And that’s exactly what -– before God and her mother and Oprah and everyone.
“I’m not going to have sex until I’m married. I can guarantee it.”
And when pressed by Oprah, she insisted that her pledge is not unrealistic because, dang it, this time she means it.
Why does this matter? Why should anyone care what Bristol Palin has to say about the weather, let alone about sex?
Because Bristol Palin embodies the kind of counter-productive, over-politicized and downright stupid policies that have led to for the first time in a decade.
The U.S. teen pregnancy rate rose in 2006 for the first time in more than a decade, reversing a long slide, a U.S. think tank reported on Tuesday.
…
“It’s interesting to note that this flattening out of the rate and the increase in the rate is happening at the same time that we’ve seen substantial increases in funding for abstinence-only programs…We do know that when we saw the big decline in the ’90s, that a lot of that decline was due to improved contraceptive use among teens.”
After years of warning the Bush administration and social conservatives that abstinence-only education does not stop teens from having sex, nor does it prevent teen pregnancy, by the Guttmacher Institute confirms what many have feared: that deliberately misinforming teens about sex can have serious consequences and that comprehensive sex education, in addition to the availability of contraception, is the best way to reduce teen pregnancy rates.
The significant drop in teen pregnancy rates in the 1990s was overwhelmingly the result of more and better use of contraceptives among sexually active teens. However, this decline started to stall out in the early 2000s, at the same time that sex education programs aimed exclusively at promoting abstinence—and prohibited by law from discussing the benefits of contraception—became increasingly widespread and teens’ use of contraceptives declined.
The study’s authors were careful to point out that it is too soon to tell whether this reversal is merely a “blip” or part of a long-term increase.
When President Bush took office, he aggressively promoted abstinence-only education, investing more than a billion dollars in these programs during the course of his presidency. In 2004, Rep. Henry Waxman released a that abstinence-only programs were actually teaching false and misleading information to teens about sex and contraception.
Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person’s genitals “can result in pregnancy,” a congressional staff analysis has found.
At the time, Waxman was criticized by proponents of abstinence-only education, including Joe S. McIlhaney Jr., who ran the institute that developed much of the abstinence-only “education” material, and Alma Golden, a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, who claimed Waxman’s report was a “political document” that did a “disservice to our children.” But it turns out that the real disservice to children was teaching them false information, denying them access to contraception, and insisting “just say no” was sound policy.
In 2004, a found that even those teens who have taken chastity pledges — promising to forgo sex until marriage — don’t actually abstain. A whopping 88 percent of teens who take such pledges still engage in premarital sex. That means that despite Bristol’s promise to abstain (this time), the very strong likelihood is that she won’t. And because she still refuses to learn about contraception or teach other teens that contraception, rather than empty promises, is the best way to prevent teen pregnancy, she’s setting herself up for another big surprise. And she’s doing her best to make sure other girls end up in the same position.
So while Bristol enjoys her fifteen minutes as the poster child for this-time-I-really-mean-it abstinence, collecting payments through her very own corporation, and helping her mother’s political ambitions by continuing to spew the party line, other teenage girls who don’t have her good fortune will find themselves in a world of trouble if they listen to her. And there are some rather harsh realities that Bristol, and her corporate sponsor, apparently want to overlook, to the very real detriment of all the young girls who want to believe that a sexy tee and “just say no” attitude will protect them.
It’s a very good thing that our current president for abstinence-only education. But as long as celebrities continue to tell girls that all they have to do is “just say no,” our culture has a long way to go in combating the outright ignorance and misinformation that leads to so many unplanned pregnancies. Because these stupid policies don’t prevent teen sex; they just lead to stupid teen sex.
The bottom line? “Just say no” doesn’t work, no matter how much Bristol Palin and the Candies Foundation and George W. Bush and all the social conservatives might wish it were so. Real, fact-based, comprehensive education does. Period.
AP – A top White House adviser says it’s gotten to the point where almost any unusual reaction or outburst to a speech by President Barack Obama in the House chamber isn’t really that unusual.
AP – White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says President Barack Obama’s push to create jobs may carry a price tag in the 0 billion range.
I have a habit on these Sunday essays of writing about things that happened a hundred — or a hundred million — years ago. But this morning, I’ve skimmed a somewhat shorter block of history to bring you three quotes I think you’ll find interesting.
A) This year will not be a year of politics as usual. It can be a year of inspiration and hope, and it will be a year of concern, of quiet and sober reassessment of our nation’s character and purpose. It has already been a year when voters have confounded the experts. And I guarantee you that it will be the year when we give the government of this country back to the people of this country. … It is time for the people to run the government, and not the other way around.
Does this speech sound familiar? Quickly now, whose upstart campaign produced this message of overturning the status quo, of taking back our country, and of that thing called hope?
If that one’s not obvious, try this.
B)There is a new mood in America. We have been shaken by a tragic war abroad and by scandals and broken promises at home. Our people are searching for new voices and new ideas and new leaders. Although government has its limits and cannot solve all our problems, we Americans reject the view that we must be reconciled to failures and mediocrity, or to an inferior quality of life. For I believe that we can come through this time of trouble stronger than ever. Like troops who have been in combat, we have been tempered in the fire; we have been disciplined, and we have been educated. …
It is time for a nationwide comprehensive health program for all our people.
It is time for our government leaders to respect the law no less than the
humblest citizen, so that we can end once and for all a double standard of justice. I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free and the poor ones go to jail.A simple and a proper function of government is just to make it easy for us to do good and difficult for us to do wrong.
Who is that making a case for that government can be an agency of our best intentions, including universal health care and holding those who violate the public trust accountable? Does it sound like anyone you know?
Here’s one more. It’s a bit longer, but stick with it.
C)I believe that anyone who is able to work ought to work–and ought to have a chance to work. We will never have a balanced budget—which I am determined to see–as long as we have eight or nine million Americans out of work who cannot find a job. Any system of economics is bankrupt if it sees either value or virtue in unemployment.
The foremost responsibility of any President, above all else, is to guarantee the security of our nation—a guarantee of freedom from the threat of successful attack or blackmail, and the ability with our allies to maintain peace. But peace is not the mere absence of war. Peace is action to stamp out international terrorism.
We can have an America that provides excellence in education to my child and your child and every child.
We can have an America that encourages and takes pride in our ethnic diversity, our religious diversity, our cultural diversity—knowing that out of this pluralistic heritage has come the strength and the vitality and the creativity that has made us great and will keep us great.
We can have an American government
Ours is the party of the man who was nominated by those distant conventions and who inspired and restored this nation in its darkest hours— Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Ours is the party of a fighting Democrat who showed us that a common man could be an uncommon leader—Harry S. Truman.
Ours is the party of a brave young President who called the young at heart, regardless of age, to seek a “New Frontier” of national greatness—John F. Kennedy.
And ours is also the party of a great-hearted Texan who took office in a tragic hour and who went on to do more than any other President in this century to advance the cause of human rights—Lyndon Johnson.
Our Party was built out of the sweatshops of the old Lower East Side, the dark mills of New Hampshire, the blazing hearths of Illinois, the coal mines of Pennsylvania, the hard-scrabble farms of the southern coastal plains, and the unlimited frontiers of America.
Ours is the party that welcomed generations of immigrants—the Jews, the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and all the others, enlisted them in its ranks and fought the political battles that helped bring them into the American mainstream. And they have shaped the character of our party.
That is our heritage.
As I’ve said many times before, we can have an American President who does not govern with negativism and fear of the future, but with vigor and vision and aggressive leadership—a President who’s not isolated from the people, but who feels your pain and shares your dreams and takes his strength and his wisdom and his courage from you.
Who is this candidate worrying about peace in a time of international terrorism? Who is this candidate facing both mounting national debts and high unemployment? Who is this proud Democrat who recalls the best traditions of party? Who is this person who “feels your pain”?
Okay, here are your answers A) Jimmy Carter. B)Jimmy Carter. C) Jimmy Carter. In fact, all of these are parts of Jimmy Carter’s speech on the acceptance of the Democratic nomination in 1976. (I confess I edited them a good bit. If I’d left in the bicentennial references, there wouldn’t have been much of a puzzle.)
Whenever President Carter’s name appears in the paper lately it’s treated as an insult. A shorthand for failure. The Republicans seem anxious to draw a relationship between President Obama and his predecessor from Georgia, as if there was some similarity between the two men and their situation. The thing is, on this one thing, the GOP is right.
The view we have of Carter today is often one made half from old jokes and half from Republican insults. The truth is that Jimmy Carter was — still is — a brilliant man. Far from being a bumbler whose only memorable line was “national malaise,” he was an inspired and inspiring speaker who came into office primarily by capturing the votes of new voters. On that sunny day in January when Carter shocked the pundits by walking the length of the inaugural parade route, he entered the White House with the nation glad to finally put Watergate behind it, 61 Democrats in the Senate, and a 55% to 45% edge in the House. Even though his electoral victory was a narrow one, he entered office with a 66% approval rating in the Gallup poll.
Four years later, he left the White House with a 34% approval rating. In the race against Ronald Reagan, Carter captured only 10% of the electoral votes. In a flip of twelve seats, Republicans took control of the Senate and the edge in the House dropped by 35 seats.
A big part of that drop was brought on by the crisis in Iran. Opponents had the luxury of suggesting “bold” action, while Carter was more concerned with safe return of the hostages. Carter took the blame for the inflation and unemployment he had inherited, while Reagan promised “morning in America” if taxes were cut. The infamous “there you go again” line? That was Reagan’s response to Carter’s support for a bill to of fix problems in Medicare funding. In a interview after the event, Reagan told why he attacked Carter on this point.
Reagan: Some of the people who were proposing this, and I wasn’t against the Medicare bill that finally came along, but some of the people that were proposing this, it was obvious that they, in reality, wanted socialized medicine. And I know a little bit about socialized medicine as it’s practiced in a number of other countries…
Sound familiar? The bill didn’t contain anything that Reagan was willing to discuss in detail, but he could tell that “some of the people” proposing the bill wanted to turn American’s health care system into… well, insert your favorite demonized foreign health care system here. And that was enough to generate plenty of red-scare talk during the election season. Carter faced more charges of “socialism” over another issue — bailing out the bankrupt Chrysler Corporation.
But beyond charges of socialized medicine, auto company bailouts, and attempts to balance an energy crisis against the environment, Carter faced another problem that’s familiar — an uncooperative congress. Senators had no inclination to help the outsider who had run against Washington. They didn’t see Carter as a successful governor who had slashed through Georgia’s patronage system and eliminated 270 state agencies while delivering more services. They saw him as the goofy outsider with the big teeth. He was a flash in the pan, their control of the Congress was eternal — until it wasn’t. The inability to pass a Democratic agenda even though Democrats held House, White House, and a filibuster-prof majority in the Senate cost not only Carter. The next time Democrats would see 60 seats in the Senate would be when Al Franken came to town.
Not only did Democrats lose control of Washington, they failed to solve the issues of health care and clean energy. And they handed the economy over to the “Reaganomics” that’s left us not only the world’s greatest debtor nation, but with a tax structure that promotes an unsustainable and growing gap between rich and poor. Much of Reagan’s radical and fantasy-based theory of the economy has become so embedded that it seems far more immutable than the policies that keep America solvent for decades.
Despite the way conservatives and the Washington media treat President Carter’s name, his reputation has grown considerably over the years. His efforts in the Middle East were critical in building a lasting peace, he’s the only president to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his actions after leaving office, and his favorability rating with the public now rivals the numbers he enjoyed at the beginning of his presidency. Which is all great. I especially appreciate the way it drives people on the right crazy.
But I would just as soon this time around Democrats prove Will Rogers wrong for once, act like an organized party, and subjugate some big egos long enough to get some much needed laws passed. That’s the best way to be sure that 2012 won’t end up looking like 1980. I don’t want to be sitting in my rocking chair circa 2040 hearing about how the public now believes Barack Obama was actually a pretty good president, and the guy they elected this time is finally going to do something about how no one can afford an asprin and the air’s getting kind of crunchy. Frankly, we’re still paying off Reagan, we barely survived Bush, the country won’t survive another round of conservatism, and I’ll never make it to 2040. So get it right this time, okay?
Sundays are great days for having an opinion. And if you read this blog, it’s an informed opinion. Not everyone does.
editorial:
The economy grew at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009. But well over half of that growth came from large adjustments to business inventories that are unlikely to be repeated on a similar scale in the months to come. As such, they are evidence that the sick economy is recovering, not that it is healthy.
:
In the end, the Republicans may well go back to being inflexibly inflexible with this president, but for a moment in time, each side realized that the other side had something to say. It was, as The Times’s reporters Peter Baker and Carl Hulse called it, a televised marriage-therapy session “as each side vented grievances pent up after a year of partisan gridlock.
Which moment was that, Maureen? Only one side took a beating at the meeting and it wasn’t the ‘just say no’ party that had something of substance to say. The examples you listed pale before the observation that Republicans opposed the stimulus and then showed up at ribbon cuttings paid for by the stimulus. Drawing false equivalence is exactly what’s wrong with punditry. “The Jets and the Colts both showed up in the AFC title game, and both scored. Must have been a tie.” “Opposing Bush on Iraq is the same as opposing Obama on health care’. Uh, no.
Obama’s advisers must wish they could do this every week for the cameras. It was a lot more elucidating than Joe Wilson shouting, “You lie!”
There’s a reason Obama ’s advisers must wish to do this every week. Can you think of what it is?
:
In Obama’s speech, he kept circling back to a Senate where both parties are dysfunctional. The obstructionist Republicans, he observed, will say no to every single bill “just because they can.” But no less culpable are the Democrats, who maintain “the largest majority in decades” even after losing Teddy Kennedy’s seat — and yet would rather “run for the hills” than accomplish anything.
What does strong Senate leadership look like?
Anyone old enough to remember?
: Amusing piece on Fantasy
BaseballPolitics and drafting your fantasty team based on the available players.— President Obama (D). Last year, Obama didn’t always perform like a No. 1 pick: He let Congress draft key legislation on health care and climate change, which meant he wouldn’t get the points if that legislation passed (not that it did). But he’s still got the presidency’s advantages, including the ability to invite himself into scoring opportunities on network TV. And judging from the State of the Union, this may be a more active year for him, with Obama taking a more personal role in fights from offshore drilling to “don’t ask don’t tell.” One caveat: He did, at one point during the speech, admit some fault for the Democrats’ problems. Major negative points. Let’s hope he doesn’t make it a habit.
on fractured Dems:
Another moment that set the tone for the 2009 debate was the founding of the Democratic Leadership Council in 1985. The DLC advocated tax cuts for America’s middle-class, championed welfare reform, and denounced the proliferation of liberal interest-group politics. DLC executive director Al From argued that “fundamental changes in the [Democratic] message” were urgently needed after party losses in the 1988 presidential election, and DLC president Bill Clinton told centrist Democrats that their party should offer Americans “a new choice” that “provides them responsive government.”
Such sentiments didn’t end with the waning influence of the DLC in more recent times. Indeed, centrists often expressed unease with the size and scope of Obama’s government-led health-care reform plan. Lest they be branded as big-government liberals, centrists, for the most part, fought against the public option, sang the praises of free markets in general, and opposed expanding Medicare to insure more Americans.
Still, health reform passed the House and got 60 (or 59, depending on your math) votes in the Senate. In a functional Senate, that’d be more than enough.
: In defense of Congress’ productivity, they’ve done more than the pundits would have you believe.
The productivity began with the stimulus package, which was far more than an injection of 7 billion in government spending to jump-start the ailing economy. More than one-third of it — 8 billion — came in the form of tax cuts, making it one of the largest tax cuts in history, with sizable credits for energy conservation and renewable-energy production as well as home-buying and college tuition. The stimulus also promised billion for the critical policy arena of health-information technology, and more than billion to advance research on the effectiveness of health-care treatments.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has leveraged some of the stimulus money to encourage wide-ranging reform in school districts across the country. There were also massive investments in green technologies, clean water and a smart grid for electricity, while the billion or more in energy and environmental programs was perhaps the most ambitious advancement in these areas in modern times. As a bonus, more than billion was allotted to expand broadband and wireless Internet access, a step toward the goal of universal access.
Good. But jobs and health reform dominate.
:
But right now it’s Democrats who are behind the 8-ball — and the extent to which voters are disengaged from each twist and turn of the news cycle is not liable to change any time soon. And what these semi-informed voters have mostly seen from the Democrats is a series of mixed messages.
Mixed messages? Depends at that moment whether you are dissing or courting Ben Nelson. See articles above by Dallek and Ornstein.
:At a moment of what could be great opportunity, the Republican Party struggles with disputes over ideology, tactics and leadership.
Also, ideas, philosophy and public disdain.
Politico – Republican party officials are counting on a boost from an unlikely source – President Obama.
For the past few months, progressives have been lamenting the fact that the Barack Obama they saw was nowhere to be found in the White House.
But then, a funny thing happened on the way to the — President Obama found his voice, and used it to excoriate and alike.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the President then ventured into (aka, the ), where he proceeded to thrown his way.
Then he signed some … and there was joy throughout the land.
Riding the Diary Rescue streetcar tonight are sunspark says, Louisiana 1976, HoosierDeb, Alfonso Nevarez, shayera, and jlms qkw, with YatPundit in the motorman’s chair, as we kick off Mardi Gras parades with the Krewe du Vieux AND the Krewe du Rescue tonight.
Diary Rescue is all about promoting good writers, so remember to whose work you enjoy reading.
The Rescues:
jotter has .
carolita has .
Please join the Diary Rescue krewe this evening by suggesting your own rescues in this Open Thread.