{look upon my works, ye mighty}

Governor Palin has a Down's syndrome kid.

I know, I know, that doesn't seem like a reason for me to hate her. After all, I grew up with a handicapped sister, taught special ed kids, and am generally highly in favor of rights for disabled people.

But the thing is, Palin doesn't just have a Down's kid. She chose to have one. Early screening meant that she was warned that her baby had Down's syndrome but due to her stance on abortion, she decided to go ahead and have the child anyway.

STUPID. Stupid, stupid, stupid and selfish. So you're pro-life and refuse to abort this kid on principle? Congratulations, you've doomed him to a lifetime of suffering. A short lifetime, mind you, because most Down's kids have shorter lifespans and are highly susceptible to anything going around, but it's still pretty much a given that they're going to suffer for as long as they live. They won't be able to keep up with the other kids, they'll be developmentally stunted both physically and mentally and it's all your fault for having brought said kid into the world, knowing what he'd have to face.

In the class I taught, one girl called Sandy had Down's syndrome and about a month after I finished with her class, she died of pneumonia. Before that, she had to wear diapers all the time, and the aides had to take her into the bathroom to change her and wipe her ass, because she couldn't even manage that on her own. She couldn't talk normally, she was short and highly obese and even in the classroom full of special needs kids, she stuck out as even more hopeless than most. Sandy was 22 when she died, but she was about at the developmental stage of a 2-year-old, if that.

And this is the sort of child that Governor Palin thinks is a gift from God. This is the sort of life that she's going to cause the boy to lead, because she's too selfish to put aside her own views and think about what's honestly best for the child.

Apart from which, you know what? She has no business running for VP if she has a disabled kid.

Nobody with a disabled kid should be taking on a public office job that has a huge time commitment, because there's no way that they can do that and take care of their child at the same time. My parents both worked full-time, had a live-in nurse, a live-in maid and an older daughter who took care of herself (me), and even they worked themselves to the bone to take care of my sister. I refuse to believe that Palin can juggle four kids, a Down's syndrome kid, and the job of being VP all at once; there's no way she can manage it and still give her kids the attention they need, especially the disabled one.

Obama's choice of VP is 'meh', because for a guy who talks about CHANGE all the time, he went with a really traditional Old White Male choice.

McCain's choice? Thoroughly despicable. Even putting aside the anti-abortion, anti-contraception (wtf, has she never heard of AIDS?) issues, I have no respect for anyone who would deliberately bring a child into the world, knowing that child's life will be filled with nothing but suffering. No respect AT ALL.

Edit: If you want to know more about the political stances that Palin has, check out ilyena_sylph's post here where she lays out on the line all the reasons why no liberal female should think that Palin's likely to be on their side.

I signed up to write for International Blog Against Racism Week, so this week, my flist is going to get a fair dose of my opinions and thoughts of racism.

First, a little disclaimer and history.

History: I am ethnically Sri Lankan with two Sri Lankan parents. I was born in LA, California. I grew up mostly in Austria, Europe. I attend university in America but before that, I went to a truly international school where most of the students had parents in the UN. My own parents work for the UN. I'm an intern for the UN in Austria at the moment.

There, that's the history over with. Painless, huh? Just bear in mind that I belong to one continent, grew up on a second and currently reside on a third.

Disclaimer-wise: I am not a good Sri Lankan girl. I have Asian pride, but there are many aspects in which I am not 'Sri Lankan enough'. I am not a good Austrian girl, and can in no way pass for one, and would never try it anyway. I doubt that I'm a good American girl, since the culture still makes me boggle and I find it hard to define myself as belonging to a country that I've spent barely three years in.

If I'm talking about racism, I'm talking about racism based on my appearance of being Sri Lankan or South Asian. If I say Asian without anything before it, I probably mean all of Asia. Otherwise, I have to differentiate between South Asian (India, Sri Lankan, Pakistan, Bangladesh), East Asian (Japanese, South Korean, North Korean, Chinese) and South East Asian (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore) because otherwise, I suspect that saying 'Asian' will just make most people think 'Japanese' or thereabouts.

So, on with the post!

For today, I decided to talk about my very first encounter with racism -- or at least, the first one that I recognized as racism, or the first one that I am old enough to remember. There could have been others, earlier on, but this is the one that made the most impact on me.

( My First Encounter With Racism. Nowhere near as cool as My First Pony or whatever. )

China takes 'Net addiction very seriously.

The part that killed me was:

Addiction to the Internet is blamed for most juvenile crime in China, a number of suicides, and deaths from exhaustion by players unable to tear themselves away from marathon game sessions.

In 2005, a Shanghai court handed a life sentence to an online game player who stabbed a competitor to death for stealing his cyber-sword -- a virtual prize earned during game-play.

SUICIDES. DEATH FROM EXHAUSTION. Holy fuck, guys. I mean, I've stayed up for 40+ hours from insomnia but that's not the same as not being able to tear myself off the Net. I stay on the Net because I'm awake, not stay awake to be on the Net.

And apart from which, boot camp? BOOT CAMP? Some of my closest friends are people who I know because of the Net. How does that equal sociopathy due to not enough interaction with other humans? Gah. Who gets sent to boot fucking camp to cure Net addiction?

Not to mention that I'm exhausted enough to picture a camp full of shoes, pumpin' it to the max. High heels working that spine, sneakers flapping their tongues, laces really testing how much weight they can take, etc. It's a rather amusing mental image, though it does absolutely nothing to alleviate the absolute horror of being sent off to BOOT CAMP for Net addiction.

Really. BOOT CAMP. And in case you haven't got the point already, BOOT CAMP. Boot freakin' camp, man.

Edot: Okay, so this has nothing to do with Internet addiction at all, but for all the short, gorgeous girls on my flist who hate their height, here's an interesting little snippet about heights and celebs.

Christina Aguilera (5'2")
Eva Longoria (5'2")
Rachel Bilson (5'1")
Hillary Duff (5'2")
Britney Spears (5'4")
Kate Bush (5')
Jessica Simpson (5′4")
Jada Pinkett Smith (5′)

I'm the same height as Britney Spears and have better hair. Cool.

Read them.

Trust me, I couldn't phrase it anywhere near as well as they have.

But just to convince you to click, here are some choice excerpts:

In Scotland, it [rape] can only be committed by males upon females, which appears to mean by persons biologically male at birth upon persons born biologically female.

Translation: If you're a guy, tough luck. You can't accuse anyone of raping you, because it couldn't have happened.

But where the accused has no involvement at all in producing the victim’s state of insensibility and where he happens upon her by chance and has sexual intercourse with her when she is totally unaware of his presence and intentions, then it cannot be established that she demonstrated unwillingness. Therefore, it cannot be shown that any force was used to overcome unwillingness which never existed in fact; therefore, there is no rape.

Translation: If you find an unconscious girl and fuck her, it's not rape.

What have come to be known graphically as “oral sex” and “anal sex” do
not qualify as rape and digital penetration is not sufficient to constitute rape.

Translation: Rape = penis into vagina with lots of violence or threats thereof. Nothing else counts. And that is why guys can't get raped -- they don't have vaginas! Wow. Groundbreaking theory there.

Just read it. I'm hissing, snarling and wanting to shake the fucking idiots who came up with those definitions, so I think this is about as much commentary as I can dish out.

Edit:

Lysander [PWNED, care of Fickle] says:
And then there's the added bonus of the fact that rapists were allowed to cross-examine their victims in court and use any and every bit of info they had on prior sexual history until the law finally was passed to stop that after a girl committed suicide after being cross-examined by her rapist for five days straight during which he wore the same outfit he was wearing when he assaulted her and made her hold up the panties she was wearing at the time for the court. Repeatedly. I hate them all and want them to die.