Dickie,

You heaped personal criticism on Palin.
I put a little criticisn on you.
You heaped personal criticism on me.
I justified my criticism of you ... when asked.
You heaped personal criticism on me.

Is this a pattern?

Good to see you accept the sexist argument and the justification of the scared cat criticism though... an up and down acknowledgement of error rather than a rueful silence would have been much better though.

Keith, On Friday you commented;
Foyle You are a touting gossip...shame on you.
Foyle You are touting sexist bias against women... shame on you.
In the second of my two earlier posting on this item I repeated an editorial comment that day from Crikey for the benefit of those who had not seen it. In the earlier posting, for runner's and Sells' benefit I summarised my comments from a letter I wrote many years ago on the subject of abortion and women's rights when those matters were hot issues. My letter made the lead position at the SMH on the day it was published. Not one of my four daughters, all in or near middle age, would accept that I am in any way biased against women or against women's rights. They and their brothers may believe just the opposite.
Part of my SMH letter read, "Over her reproductive period every woman produces about 350 eggs each capable of being fertilised. In the prime of her life, almost in every case, an aborted pregnancy can be replaced by a new pregnancy at some later date.
Overpopulation rather than underpopulation is now a human problem. My humanist belief system convinces me that early in a pregnancy a woman has the right to decide if a baby is the best decision for her,
particularly if the potential child is genetically defective or the pregnancy is an 'accident'. Similarly a terminally ill person should be able to determine the time and place of his or her last breath. Religious bigots have no rights over another adult’s life and we do not need politicians of the busybody ilk.

Foyle,

Tell me exactly how the life choices of a candidate's teenagers are relevant to determining the policy and performance of a candidate.

'The fact is, that the pregnancy of Palin junior points to the deeper hypocrisy of the proselytizing, moralizing, upright, arrogantly self assertive religious right.'

BS it is private family business being continually raised as relevant to the political debate by angry and disaffected leftie gossips especially those who dispute Palin's right hold opinions different to them.

And you appear to be one.

I think rather than obfuscate with the fanciful idea lefties would not criticise a liberal left male candidate in similar circumstance, you would need to consider whether the left would raise any questions about Palin if she held liberal/left views, was their nominee and her daughter had an abortion or even more appropriately had decided to keep and raise the child with Palin's wholehearted motherly support? They wouldn't talk about it and it would not reach anywhere near the level of current discussion.

Keith. The point is that Palin takes the high moral ground, yet it appears she has poor communication or direction regarding her own children.

The high moral ground is taken by those on the left. It is total hypocrisy that they preach moral relativism (justifying any behaviour)and then judge people who live by that standard. At least Sarah had the humility and dignity to admit her failures unlike the godless earth worshipers.

Runner. You are just too, too, Precious