Can pedophiles even vote? (or “John McCain’s latest ad”)

Spread the love

John McCain is crazy like a fox. A real maverick. He’s like a fighter pilot, zig zagging all around to stay one step ahead, behind, or on top of his opponent. While Barack Obama’s skipping through small-town America trying to shore up his vote among the white working class, McCain (maverick that he is) is going after a heretofore untapped segment of the electorate: pedophiles.

I know, it surprised me too. But what other conclusion can one reach after seeing his latest ad castigating Obama for advocating legislation that would teach young children how to protect themselves against sexual predators?


Discussion (9)¬

  1. Darrin Bell says:

    Good point. I let myself be dragged into the minutaea a bit. The big picture: Honorable men don’t continually say one thing and do another, don’t repeatedly lie, especially after being called on it. An honorable man doesn’t embrace the people who smeared his wife and child. I agree with you, in my eyes that’s when he revealed himself to be someone other than who most Americans believed he was. As I pointed out in today’s cartoon.

    Although, in light of his current behavior, I’m inclined to believe the Keating Five business was no innocent accident.

  2. Ken says:

    Maybe it’s the case that the McCain campaign is not in favor of adult predators and instead prefers some kind of tot-on-tot action. The difference seems rather subtle to me.
    I would point out that the original issue was McCain’s deliberate mis-representation of Obama’s record when he had promised not to run a negative campaign. Fact Check and other independent organizations have made clear that the McCain ad was misleading. Squabbling exactly over who touches who is a diversion from the issue of the basic goals of talking to young children about sex: protecting them from it.
    For me the loss of McCain’s honor began months earlier when he cowered before the people he had previously recognized as “agents of intolerance” and when he courted the people who had spread the “mixed race” baby story in 2000. For many of us who were excited by McCain’s candidacy in 2000 the change has been a huge disappointment.

  3. Darrin Bell says:

    OK, now you’re really stretching. The law doesn’t have to specify that the unwanted advances come from adults rather than peers. Who the hell do you think most kindergarteners have to fear when it comes to unwanted sexual advances?

    Let’s say for the sake of argument you were right (you’re not), that the self defense portion is ONLY about teaching kids to protect themselves from other kids. You don’t think THAT’s important? John McCain doesn’t think THAT is important? What exactly are you trying to say?

    As for the Martinez quote your right-wing publication dug up, she was one of FIVE sponsors of the bill and the only one who stated she didn’t see it as mostly about inappropriate touching. But even if she’d been the only sponsor, that’s neither here nor there. The bill was a comprehensive sex ed bill, and inappropriate touching was part of it. What you keep IGNORING is the “age appropriate” clause. Since McCain made this conversation about KINDERGARTENERS, it’s disingenuous and dishonorable of you and your party to cite the information that would be imparted to OLDER students as proof that McCain was right about the kindergarteners.

    What you’re doing is just following your party’s playbook of the past several years. When someone points out a misdeed, your party doesn’t rectify it, they simply shoot the messenger and demand that the messenger apologize for talking about it. No, sorry, I don’t play that game.

    Sorry your candidate’s gone out of his way to provide cartoonists with so much material, but your righteous indignation is misplaced. You should be directing it to your candidate.

  4. sonofasailor53 says:

    So… exactly WHICH part of the law you’ve cited talks about adult predators? The context of all you’ve cited is geared toward unwanted sexual conduct by peers, NOT by predators – this is clearly information which is part of a generic sex education class, and it has nothing to do with keeping kids safe from adult pedophiles. If you see this as a law directed toward what Obama has said it was, then you have truly lost any sense of perspective, and, yes, honor. But don’t believe me – look at what Senator Iris Martinez, one of the sponsors of the bill, said when interviewed about it:

    After we discussed other aspects of the bill, I told Martinez that reading the bill, I just didn’t see it as being exclusively, or even mostly, about inappropriate touching. “I didn’t see it that way, either,” Martinez said. “It’s just more information about a whole variety of things that have to go into a sex education class, the things that are outdated that you want to amend with things that are much more current.”

    So, I asked, you didn’t see it specifically as being about inappropriate touching?

    “Absolutely not.” [taken from 9/16/08 Nat’l Review Online article by Byron York]

    So – will you be running those strips apologizing to Sen. McCain? No, I suppose not – political attacks are too much fun to let facts get in the way, aren’t they?

  5. Darrin Bell says:

    You’re wrong. Does the following constitute “absolutely no mention”?:

    SB99: Course material and instruction shall discuss and provide
    for the development of positive communication skills to maintain healthy relationships and avoid unwanted sexual activity. … Course material and instruction shall teach pupils … how to say no to unwanted sexual advances … and shall include information about verbal, physical, and visual sexual harassment, including without limitation nonconsensual sexual advances, nonconsensual physical sexual contact, and rape by an acquaintance. The course material and instruction shall contain methods of preventing sexual assault by an acquaintance, including exercising good judgment and avoiding behavior that impairs one’s judgment.

    And elsewhere in the bill:

    (12) Course material and instruction shall teach
    21 male pupils about male accountability for sexual violence
    22 and shall teach female students about reducing
    23 vulnerability for sexual violence.
    24 (13) Course material and instruction shall teach
    25 pupils about counseling, medical, and legal resources
    26 available to survivors of sexual abuse and sexual
    27 assault, including resources for escaping violent
    28 relationships.
    29 (14) Course material and instruction shall teach
    30 pupils that it is wrong to take advantage of or to
    31 exploit another person.

    And the version Obama supported called for “age-appropriate” sex education for students K-12. What’s appropriate for high school seniors isn’t the same as what’s appropriate for Kindergarteners.

    Read more about it at http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/off_base_on_sex_ed.html

    As for “impugning John McCain’s honor,” I suggest you write to John McCain and ask why HE’s done that. Or at the very least, read the text of the bill yourself before accusing others of not having read it.

  6. sonofasailor53 says:

    THE MCCAIN SEX-ED AD WAS ACCURATE
    It never ceases to amaze me how willfully blind some political partisans can be. I have heard it repeated again and again over the past 10 days or so that the legislation Obama voted for was merely a law protecting children from predators, and therefore McCain was dishonorable to run an ad describing it as “sex ed for kindergartners.” Have ANY of you even bothered to look at the legislation itself? McCain’s description of it is exactly accurate. The legislation is an amendment of an old sex education law in which certain words have been added and changed to reflect more modern attitudes toward sex education – i.e., words such as “he” and “his” have been changed to gender-neutral words, etc. BUT, and here’s the kicker: the old law applied to grades 6 through 12 – the new law strikes out the “6-12” and substitutes “K-12” , making this law apply to kindergartners where before it had applied to 6th grade and up. There is ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION in this law of children protecting themselves against adult predators, which is what has been spun by Obama and his supporters. Here is the link to the law itself:
    http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=3&GA=93&DocTypeId=SB&DocNum=99&GAID=3&LegID=734&SpecSess=&Session

    So, perhaps Darrin Bell will run a series of strips apologizing for impugning John McCain’s honor – yeah, sure – when pigs with lipstick fly.

  7. Darrin Bell says:

    Do you honestly think Obama was calling Palin a pig? That wouldn’t even make sense as an insult. Maybe if she were obese, this would be plausible.

    And what does any of that have to do with McCain condemning Obama for trying to protect children from sexual predators? Of course the post was tongue in cheek, we all know McCain was lying in an attempt to cast Obama as some sort of sexual deviant who’s coming after your kids. But that kind of lie could have the effect of making parents suspicious about age appropriate sex education. If it politicizes the teaching of predator-avoidance to small children, how is that anything but despicable? Tell me how that doesn’t affect your opinion of the man’s character.

  8. Chuck says:

    Yeah, Yeah. This is really setting the record straight. McCain is trying to get pedophiles to vote for him. Sure… And the DFL has been registering the dead, which is probably the most neglected section of the electorate… (Sarcasm mode off)

    Let me state: Being a Pedophile IN ITSELF is not a crime. The crime is in ACTION of molestation, rape, or incest. It wasn’t that long ago, in CA, when a man was placed under virtual house arrest even for being an admitted pedophile WHO HAD NEVER ACTED ON THE IMPULSE.
    __________________________

    That aside, I’ve been examining the records of all involved this year. Biden, McCain, and Palin all have sons in the military. Obama does not. Darrin, one of your most used complaints has been that Bush has no Children serving in Iraq. So, now, three of 4 of our candidates do. Three of our 4 have no military experience. Only McCain does. Obama may have had to register, I’m not sure about that. Biden was eliminated due to health problems (Asthma).

    Palin has the only EXECUTIVE experience. McCain has Command experience, but that’s not exactly the same. Biden has much more legislative experience than Obama. He’s been chair of the Judiciary committee, and othe committess, and it certainly qualifies him to be President of the Senate (Veep).

    What is Obama’s EXECUTIVE experience? None! His Military? NONE. Clinton, at least, was in ROTC, even if he received many deferments.

    That all said, I STILL don’t know how I’ll vote. Palin concerns me. Obama’s “Pig” remark turned me off entirely. I COULD find myself sitting it out, voting for Nader, or writing in someone else. I’ve still got time to decide.

    If you think I’m just “saying” this to make noise, think again. You can check out my opinions therer on my OWN blog, not just here.

    No, I’m not against Obama. I’m just not FOR him.

  9. Ken says:

    After getting his butt kicked by W in 2000 McCain decided he’d do whatever it took to win. His ambition has overwhelmed his sense of honor and he’s become the kind of politician he once scorned. Expect more of these attacks over the next coupe of months.

    It’s a scary time. A Republican friend of mine told me she was attacked when she told a friend that she couldn’t support Palin until she heard more about her record. She confided to me that she’s alarmed by the cult of personality surrounding the GOP. It was somewhat comforting to hear a Republican worry about not being allowed to question party line or even express hesitation.

    There’s no blaming anyone else. Obama is running a pretty good campaign. The record is clear. If the collapse of the lenders didn’t tell voters something was wrong then the message isn’t going to get through. If Americans want to buy into 4 to 8 more years of these policies we have no one to blame but ourselves.

    The good news is that McCain will not be as bad as Bush. I believe that he will reclaim some of his soul after he wins election. However, Palin looks like a bad copy of W