T: Is for Taking a Stand!

Where are the tabloids when you need them? Jamie Lynn Spears and the students of Gloucester High School were thrown to the wolves with their teenage pregnancies, yet Bristol Palin is considered off limits according to the McCain campaign . Since when did people in politics become off limit? We have been kept in the dark about McCain's involvement with the "Keating Five Scandal." As economics and the loss of homes drive this election, shouldn't this be discussed? It is bad enough the press has been down playing McCain's age, if elected he will be the oldest president coming before Reagan. Considering that 62 is the age of social security and when president Reagan was in power lead the federal budget into deficit with a significant increase in public debt, shouldn't this be a consideration? Taken from McCain's website he states "he sufficiently recognizes the vital and unique role played by mothers and fathers in the raising of children, and the role of the family in shaping, stabilizing, and strengthening communities and our nation"? Most mothers have a hard enough time raising one kid, keeping the family intact and holding down a job. Sarah Palin is raising 5 children and is obviously according to her own stance on abstinence, failing.
According to several respected experts abstinence counseling is ineffective and money must be spent on sex education. Yet Palin opposed funding to prevent teen pregnancies. "The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support," are her words. Maybe if she has counseled her daughter in safe sex her daughter would not be a statistic. " The United States is facing a teen-pregnancy health-care crisis. 40 percent of teens who get pregnant do not graduate from high school. Less than 2 percent earn a college degree and are likely to live in poverty, with welfare and the much indebted health care system footing the bill. The statistics for teen pregnancies in 2006 were 4,265,996.00. Experts state a 15 percent rise since then, what will it be in 2008?
Also on the McCain website it states:
"self-sacrifice and the defense of innocent life are at the core of John McCain's value system and will be the guiding principles of a McCain Presidency." Is Bristol Palin being sacrificed by marrying Levi Johnston? After all he did state on his MySpace site "I don't want kids." What a shock, that all of sudden it has been removed. Statistically, Eighty percent of teenagers who are pregnant never marry, and they will get almost no support from the fathers. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that even if teen mothers do marry, the odds they will be divorced is highly probable. 48 percent of marriages by brides under 18 have ended, increasing those odds having a baby within the first seven months of marriage. In Palin's speech tonight she stated "I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau" she should of finished that statement with and my daughter Bristol took on the role of Juno. Though this election is certainly is not about teen pregnancy, it is about judgement calls, economics and standing by your beliefs. When you tear a country apart by your inconsistencies and have a whole nation debating your choice, how can you lead?

A President for this day and age needs to address the problems it faces. In order: The US economy (more specifically the mortgage and the bank melt downs, unemployment and outsourcing) the Iraq war and global warming are what are on our minds, our hearts and in our votes. These all need to be address and that is a much needed F.A.C.T.