Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Sarah Palin - - Your Reproductive Rights Champion!

I got an email yesterday marked Urgent. On inspection, I found it to be a link to some PBS poll asking if I thought Sarah Palin was qualified to be the V.P. Like a dutiful lemming, I went there, clicked on the "No" button and went about my business. About ten minutes later, I sent reply to the friend who sent me the email asking whether it was really all so urgent that Sarah Palin lose a poll.

Then, this morning, I saw something else that got me more excited. It seems that somebody has started up a campaign to get people to donate to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. And if you fill in the correct fields, Sarah gets a card from Planned Parenthood thanking her for the generous donation. This is an idea I can get behind. If you'd like to get involved, click on the above link to be taken to the page where you can donate in her honor. You can donate as little as $5.00 . From what I hear, over 18,000 people have made donations so far.

Some of the sites I've seen recommend having the thank you note sent to McCain-Palin Headquarters:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

Personally, I suggest having the thank you sent to her Governor's Office in Alaska, because they're probably less prepared to deal with such a flood of mail. I'm just nasty that way.

Governor Sarah Palin
P.O. Box 110001
Juneau, AK 99811-0001


Update: Just try leaving your office for a little while and watch the shit hit the fan. JTS, in a rather caustic comment, takes me to task with this whole thing. I'm actually going to cede him the point regarding clogging up the Alaska Governor's office with a flood of mail (Yes! My thousands of loyal readers will grind that office to a standstill. :D) I'll also cede the point about the whole thing being childish. For some reason, it still amuses me. So anyway, I encourage you to get onboard, but go ahead and have the thanks sent to the campaign's office.

And Leanright. I don't take issue at all with Palin as Governor of Alaska. I hear good things about her in that capacity and I'm glad her constituents are happy with her performance. I do, on the other hand, take great issue with the idea of her being a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Alaskan Governors don't set foreign policy, don't nominate Supreme Court Judges, and don't have any real pull on setting a national agenda. I'm sure she's as qualified as the next State Executive. I just don't like her stances on a great many issues.

15 comments:

Tracy said...

I LOVE it! What a great idea. I'm going to spread the word. Wait till she gets swamped w/ mail. hehehe

John the Scientist said...

"Personally, I suggest having the thank you sent to her Governor's Office in Alaska, because they're probably less prepared to deal with such a flood of mail. I'm just nasty that way."

I don't comment about politics often on UCF blogs., but this one pissed me off, Nathan. If you said that about my state's governor's office, I'd come down there and make sure you understood the extent of my displeasure. If I were Jim, I'd be looking for a plane ticket right now.

It's childish to interfere with a legitimate government function and drown out the voices of the people trying to legitimately connect with their own elected officials, and in so doing adding to the cost of doing government business in that state. I sure as hell would not suggest flooding Obama's mail with such junk.

If even one letter from a legitimate Alaska taxpayer gets lost because of this, they ought to nail your ass to a plank in Juneau and wait for the polar bears to eat it.

Eric said...

While I pity the poor civil servant who merely works for Governor Palin, there's nothing illegitimate or childish about making a grievance known by sending a flood of mail to the Governor's office. Indeed, political pranks used to be an honored American tradition, even when it involved the destruction of valuable private property and not merely the inconveniencing a member of somebody's staff.

Anonymous said...

I have a client, Mr. Grace from Barrow, Alaska. He tells me that he and most around him think Sarah Palin is the best thing to ever happen to Alaskan politics.

I think it's amazing that the liberal media and democrats in the lower 48 seem to know so much better.

Just an observation.

By the way....How important was being the Governor of Arkansas that made such a position training to be president of the USA.

John the Scientist said...

And Eric - the practice should have been smashed in the bud right then, and maybe we'd have had a precedent for taking out the worst excesses of the 1960s.

Alaska's not a rich state, and if you want to write Palin and complain, fine, although you are not her constituent. What is childish is this stunt and the "thank you" card. I've actually got no problem mailing it to McCain's campaign HQ - that is a prank and if they can't handle it, they're not fit to be running for that office. Shitting on the Alaska taxpayer is not a prank, it's malicious.

John the Scientist said...

Hmmm, I was referring to things the tactics Daily used to use in Chicago - which I assumed you meant. The Tea Party is in another league for many other reasons. Not least is that it did not interfere with any legitimate government function.

Anne C. said...

Leanright - if you're interested in an Alaskan's take on Sarah Palin, I would recommend Jim Wright's post and his followup on presidential qualifications.

Nathan said...

Jeez John,

Incense much?

(See updated post for my real comment)

Eric said...

John, I suspect the Governor's offices in most states are capable of handling a minor deluge of mail; obviously I can't speak for the Alaskan Executive, but I'd be shocked if they are so understaffed as to be overwhelmed by cards from Planned Parenthood. The cards will almost certainly end up in a stack, and the stack will end up in the furnace.

Which brings up the real reason the idea might be silly: it might be so ineffectual as to be irrelevant. But if people want to protest, it's a sovereign right even if the protest seems a bit silly from a more objective POV.

I'm actually far less concerned about the "waste" to the taxpayers (putting every envelope that's stamped "Planned Parenthood" or postmarked with either a New York, NY or Washington DC address in a dump pile probably takes less effort than reading letters from Alaskans to deterimine whether or not the writer belongs in a mental hospital) than I am with wasted effort on the part of the protesters or Planned Parenthood--there are probably more effective avenues of protest and effort. But if that is the means by which a group of people wants to symbolically "petition" a government for a "redress of grievances," I don't see what there is to get exercised over. There's a right to do it. I don't see it as a useful direction for my time or money, but Planned Parenthood is a good cause, and even if it weren't, hey, knock yourself out.

As for the Boston Tea Party being in a different class: well, yes, the Boston Tea Party did cost private individuals something like $1.7 million dollars (modern) in property damages, as opposed to maybe costing the entire state of Alaska one employee's overtime wages for approximately six weeks, but I think the point remains mostly valid: although I agree it would have been preferrable if the participants in the Boston Tea Party had taken action against their government instead of victimizing a mostly-innocent shipping company and its investors, the point was that "childish" political stunts are older than the Republic and an integral part of our political identity. Sometimes it can get out of hand, sure, as it did even in those days--but Americans ought to be proud of their history of protest and should consider celebrating it by engaging in (hopefully meaningful and non-injurious) political acts.

Or did you mean something else by "another league"? :-)

Eric said...

Oh, and Leanright: as you may know from my blog, I have no opnion about whether or not Governor Palin was the best thing to ever happen to Alaskan politics. I actually could care less (using that expression properly and literally): if she wasn't a nominee for Vice-President, I would care nothing for how she ran Alaska, as opposed to caring a bare smidgeon. (When the LHC goes back online in a few months, there is a small chance physicists will be able to find a bare smidgeon orbiting a Higgs boson.)

No, the only issue for anybody outside Alaska is whether the Governor ought to be a heartbeat from the Presidency, which is not only a function of her experience but also of her beliefs and values. Me, I'm "pro-choice," and I'd rather not have someone with Governor Palin's values appointing jurists. Which I believe is the whole point of the "donate for Sarah" campaign, see?

Nathan said...

Actually, I don't consider this exercise to be a protest at all. I think of it as donating to a good cause while letting Sarah Palin know that there are an awful lot of people who disagree with her...especially on this issue.

It's called irony. And I'm not any less amused by it now than I was this morning.

Tracy said...

Nathan,
I was just verifying the address, & by going to his website, found a PO box. This is the address on his website:
John McCain 2008
P.O. Box 16118
Arlington, VA 22215

Anonymous said...

I think you hit a nerve, Nathan. :-) Keep digging; don't back down.

Nathan said...

Todd,

I've got multiple mixed feelings here. I offer no apologies to anyone for suggesting that people jump on this one. I think it's a funny, harmless way of telling Sarah Palin that lots of us disagree with her...with the added benefit of funding Planned Parenthood.

OTOH, John and I have met a couple of times now and I'd like to believe we're becoming friends in meatspace. I realize that friends piss each other off from time to time without jeopardizing the friendship, but I can see how strongly he feels about this one. I'm fairly certain he'll forgive me.

Also, I'm always happy when you bother to comment here.

P.S. Did I win your next contest yet?

Jim Wright said...

John,

As an Alaskan I thought it was an amusing suggestion. Alaskans have a long history of screwing with their local government. People have done everything from mail jars of oil to plastic bags of whale blubber to the Governor. Because we're small in population and have a frontier mentality, people are pretty used to just walking into the governor's office, or knocking on Ted Steven's door. Seriously - or not seriously actually - I doubt Alaskans would be much upset by a prank like this, most would find it funny.

McCain's folks are handling Palin's election related affairs in Juneau. And this does irk a rather large number of Alaskans, however, it means that there's plenty of capacity to handle the deluge of mail resulting from Nathan's suggestion. Really. All that is being handled separately from State business and has zero impact on the local government, which is being handled by Deputy Governor Parnell anyway.

I understand your point here, John, but I thought your reaction was a little over the top. It's not like you and frankly I was kind of taken aback.