Category Archives: politics

where we are

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I don’t know where you are, but, thanks to my (not so local) geek wizard I am on the verge of being good to go on my desktop; he will finish up his tweaking tomorrow. He has my wholehearted recommendation to anyone who has computer trouble. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a saint.
Where we all are is a little more than 30 days away from the decision of our lifetimes and a little more than an hour away from an event that is certain to affect that decision.
And we are a couple of weeks past an event that certainly should have been more publicized, as 1400 Alaskans held an anti-Palin demonstration in Anchorage. Be sure to look at the photos!
And we are about a month past the day when Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for “The Vagina Monologues”, wrote a Huffington Post article about Sarah Palin that ended as follows:

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, “Drill Drill Drill.” I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

I have a feeling that the majority of the people voting for the McCain/Palin ticket will be male. Most women, I think, can see right through the perfumed smoke-screen of her informal (and uninformed) charm.

too smooth for blue collars?

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That’s the possibility that I’m really worried about regarding Barack Obama’s electability. And it’s not just America’s blue collar workers who might not be comfortable with his ease and grace.
Obama is smooth. His movements are fluid; his manner polished. His communication is effortless, informed, fluent, and diplomatic. He is smart. And he is smooth.

And that’s what worries me. I’m worried that too many of us have come to expect — and even seek — much less from out leaders. I’m worried that we have become used to bumblers and bunglers, that we are suspect of anyone who does not have to struggle to be understood, who is able to explain complex issues simply and directly, who exudes a statesmanlike confidence in any situation.
Yet, that’s what we need as our leader. That’s what the world needs as leader of the United States. We need a statesman, a diplomat — an intelligent, informed, and smooth operator in the most positive sense.
We need to be done with confidence men and choose a leader who can both inspire and deserve our confidence.

We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals.
Lincoln was a professional politician.

Felix Frankfurter

questions to ask Governor Palin

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I found the link to what follows, at Women Against Sarah Palin.

Count me as a feminist who never believed that being PTA president meant you could be, well, President. The more time we spend on dippy ruminations–how does she do it? Queen Bee on steroids or the hockey mom next door? how hot is Todd, anyway?–the less focus there will be on the kind of queries that should come first with any vice presidential candidate, and certainly would if Palin were a man. Questions like:

Please do read the whole article by Katha Pollit, “Lipstick on a Wingnut,” in The Nation.

“No matter that patriotism
is too often the refuge of scoundrels.
Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising
remain the true duty of patriots.”

—Barbara Ehrenreich

“Now I Get It!”

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I got this in an email. I don’t know who wrote it, but it sure deserves to be widely posted:


I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..
If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re ‘exotic, different.’
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track; you’re a maverick.
Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council, 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, and 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.
If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
If your husband is nicknamed ‘First Dude’, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, much clearer now.

Harper’s Wacky Tuesday on Thursday

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I used to do one of these every week, feeling that it’s good to keep life on this planet in wacky perspective. So, here, are some news bits you might have missed (and/or that I think bear repeating).

Satellite images revealed that global-warming-induced melting had left the North Pole an island.
The jobless rate rose from 5.7 percent to a five-year high of 6.1percent, with more than 84,000 jobs lost in August.
Despite McCain’s opposition to earmarks, Palin,when mayor of the 6,700-resident town of Wasilla (known tostate troopers as Alaska’s “meth capital”), hired lobbyist Steven Silver to help win federal earmarks totaling $27 million. It also emerged that Palin, 44, received her first passport in 2006.
“Paris Match” published a glossy eight-page spread of Taliban fighters wearing the uniforms of the French soldiers they had killed.
Virginia Tech students were falsely told by the local registrar of elections that if they voted at college their parents would no longer be able to claim them as dependents on their tax returns, and that they could lose their scholarships and their health- and car-insurance coverage.
Tens of thousands of copies of a Swedish food magazine were recalled after an error in a recipe for apple cake sent four readers to hospitals with nutmeg poisoning.
A British teenager’s head swelled to the size of a soccer ball after she consumed a Baileys chili-tequila-absinthe-ouzo-vodka-cider-and-gin cocktail.
For the first time in a century, a month passed without a visible spot on the sun. An ice age, said scientists, may be forthcoming.
The Victorian Aboriginal Education Association warned Australian girls not to play the didgeridoo because it was “men’s business” and could lead to infertility.
The author of the book “100 Things to Do Before You Die,” having completed about 50 of the things on his list, fell, hit his head, and died.

To read additional bits and for links to authenticate any of the above go here.

Sarah Barracuda

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If you want the truth about Sarah Palin, these are must reads.
“Sarah Baraccuda.” That’s what a woman who has known Palin since their schools days says many of her neighbors call McCain’s running mate because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness.
In an article in the LA Progressive, Anne Kilkenny, a resident of Wasilla, Alaska (where Palin was mayor) chronicles the unethical shenanigans of GOP’s VP choice over the course of her career.
If you want to learn the honest truth about Sarah Palin, it’s a must-read, and I thank Susan from Tampa for pointing me to another LA Progressive article (this one by Charlie James, an American journalist who lives in Toronto), which led me to Kilkenny’s.
James’ article begins thusly:

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively

James goes on to report:

…. many people in Alaska, and particularly Wasilla, are reluctant to speak or be quoted by name because they’re afraid of her as well as the state Republican Party machine. Apparently, the power elite are as mean as the winters.

“The GOP is kind of like organized crime up here,” an insurance agent in Anchorage who knows the Palin family, explained. “It’s corrupt and arrogant. They’re all rich because they do private sweetheart deals with the oil companies, and they can destroy anyone. And they will, if they have to.”

“Once Palin became mayor,” he continued, “She became part of that inner circle.

and

“Palin is a conniving, manipulative, a**hole,” someone who thinks these are positive traits in a governor told me, summing up Palin’s tenure in Alaska state and local politics.

“She’s a bigot, a racist, and a liar,” is the more blunt assessment of Arnold Gerstheimer who lived in Alaska until two years ago and is now a businessman in Idaho.

Go and read both articles, and then wait and see what Hillary Clinton has to say when she speaks in Tampa later today.
AND, as an added bonus, read this article that is a link from the LA Progressive.
In it, a fellow student of McCain’s at the Naval Academy tells why he will not vote for the GOP ticket:

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit, and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4-inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. I could tell many midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact, he barely managed to graduate, standing fifth from the bottom of his 800-man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always “No, John McCain was a POW with me.” The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 ½ years later, so he was a POW for 5 ½ years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.

This article sheds much needed light on McCain’s celebrated POW status and war injuries he sustained.

John was badly injured when he was shot down. Both arms were broken and he had other wounds from his ejection. Unfortunately, this was often the case; new POW’s arriving with broken bones and serious combat injuries. Many died from their wounds. Medical care was nonexistent to rudimentary. Relief from pain was almost never given and often the wounds were used as an available way to torture the POW. Because John’s father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater, he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW’s suffered similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for political propaganda.

The articles linked to above are must-reads, especially for anyone who is even thinking about voting for “an infamous…hothead” and a “vindictive and mean…racist,” because that’s what the Republicans are offering in this year’s presidential election.

Sarah Palin: “Phyllis Schlafly, only younger”

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Phyllis Schlafly. Hearing that name still makes me cringe.
This gives you some idea of who she is, still at age 81:

For four decades, right-wing icon Phyllis Schlafly has been an anti-feminist spokeswoman for the national conservative movement.

……Schlafly asserted women should not be permitted to do jobs traditionally held by men, such as firefighter, soldier or construction worker, because of their “inherent physical inferiority.”

……Schlafly also contended that married women cannot be sexually assaulted by their husbands.

“By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape,” she said..

She was everything we 70s equal right supporters feared: a woman who had the resources to spread the anti-woman notions of “fascinating womanhood.”
The only differences between Palin and Schlafly are age and the fact that Schlafly preached that a woman wouldn’t raise a family and have a job at the same time. Of course, Schlafly did not practice what she preached in that case.
Gloria Steinem, in her L.A. Times opinion piece, makes the point:

This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.

and

Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

The L.A. Times piece also says this about the Sarah Palin:

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn’t know it’s about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate’s views on “God, guns and gays” ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let’s be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can’t tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

Palin’s speech last night was scary because it was a perfect combination of content and delivery. She came across as, indeed, your neighborhood hockey mom who wins popularity as a cute, funny, and entertaining dinner speaker. What she says is not deeply thoughtful; but it is entertaining. Her delivery is so engaging that even non-conservatives might be sucked in by her natural charm and sarcastic wit.
I hope today’s women are smarter than that.

our votes as Liberal women

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Sure, I like the idea of a woman as president or vice-president. And, since I thought that Hillary Clinton had enough competencies and credentials to be a decent president, I was rooting for her.
But I would never vote for a woman just because she’s a woman. And I would never vote for a particular ticket just because there was a woman running on it. And I believe that women across America who try to live by Liberal ideals will use their vote to try to ensure that the next president is one who champions those ideals.
I know that pundits, and others, are speculating about Barack Obama losing the votes of women who wanted Hillary Clinton to get the Democratic presidential nomination — or, at least, the VP slot.
It just goes to show you how little these speculators must think of the intelligence of women. If we believe that the current administration has been an abysmal failure on every policy front, we are not going to vote for a Republican ticket that would continue those policies, even though that ticket includes a woman.
I will admit that, if the case were such that a competent, credentialed, charismatic man were running against an equally competent, credentialed, and charismatic woman, I would probably vote for the woman.
But such is not the case with the upcoming presidential election.
And, especially in this case, just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean that you champion the ideals that Liberal women hold dear. And, conversely, you don’t have to be a woman to champion the ideals that Liberal women hold dear.
Feminists and other Liberal women who had originally supported Clinton, will vote for Obama. Wait and see.
And, while you’re waiting, read this great post on that issue on Don’t Gel Too Soon.

Obamaphenomenon

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That’s what this is, isn’t it.
For the first time in my life I’ve actually watched a political party convention on television. It feels like I’m watching the rebirth of a nation, the enthusiastic start to a constructive revolution.
And I loved the line from Hillary about the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Suit.” The speech writers all outdid themselves across the board. Every speech was packed with quotable, chantable phrases.
Hope, heart, and humor. That’s what drives the Obamaphenomenon. Even I feel optimistic.