Politics

This is so hilarious.

I can’t believe all the hints they dropped and she still didn’t get that she was being punk’d. Is she even listening to what he’s saying? He states the wrong name for the Prime Minister of Canada – a name she should know based on being the Governor of Alaska. After all, Canada is a neighbor, even if she can’t see Canada from her house. No reaction. He says his wife is “hot in bed”. Nothing yet… He talks about “Hustler’s nailin’ Palin” video and she says thanks! Heh.

Their website is here.

Hat tip: Boing Boing

I thought I’d be in India on November 4th. Circumstances changed and I’m still in NYC, but I had already asked for an absentee ballot.

A couple of weeks ago, I filled in the ballot and sent it in to ensure it is counted.

Absentee voting is just not as fulfilling as going to the polling station and pulling the lever. To make myself feel better, I am giving myself an “I Voted” sticker I would have gotten if I went to the polls instead.

Let’s hope Wednesday the 5th is a new day of hope, promise and progress!

One of the most comprehensive and eloquent endorsements. Thank God there are men who stand up for their beliefs and values instead of being cowed by an increasingly oppressive and rigidly far-right Republican party.

every day. She is concise and precise. And non-partisan. In this crazy world of MSNBC and Fox, CNN is proving to be the only sane channel to watch.

Everyone is talking about her. Everything that’s needed to be said has been said. So, I will just point you to the the best article I’ve read on the woman.

It is by one of my favorite reviewers, Roger Ebert. I didn’t know Ebert wrote on politics. One could ask – why is he qualified to do so? Why are any of us qualified? Have you seen all the bloggers pontificating on the topic?! 😉

It is brilliant. So brilliant that I am reproducing it in its entirety below – the bold emphasis is mine.

—

The American Idol candidate¹

By Roger Ebert

I think I might be able to explain some of Sara Palin’s appeal. She’s the “American Idol” candidate. Consider. What defines an “American Idol” finalist? They’re good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they’re darned near the real thing. There’s a reason “American Idol” gets such high ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey, that could almost be me up there on that show!

My feeling is, I don’t want to be up there. I want a vice president who is better than me, wiser, well-traveled, has met world leaders, who three months ago had an opinion on Iraq. Someone who doesn’t repeat bald-faced lies about earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere. Someone who doesn’t appoint Alaskan politicians to “study” global warming, because, hello! It has been studied. The returns are convincing enough that John McCain and Barack Obama are darned near in agreement.

I would also want someone who didn’t make a teeny little sneer when referring to “people who go to the Ivy League.” When I was a teen I dreamed of going to Harvard, but my dad, an electrician, told me, “Boy, we don’t have the money. Thank your lucky stars you were born in Urbana and can go to the University of Illinois right here in town.”

So I did, very happily. Although Palin gets laughs when she mentions the “elite” Ivy League, she sure did attend the heck out of college. Five schools in six years. What was that about?

And how can you be her age and never have gone to Europe? My dad had died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to Europe. I had Arthur Frommer’s $5 a Day under my arm, started in London, even rented a Vespa and drove in the traffic of Rome. A few years later, I was able to send my mom, along with the $15 a Day book.

You don’t need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the country once, on an official tour to Iraq? Sarah Palin’s travel record is that of a hopeless provincial.

But some people like that. She’s never traveled to Europe, Asia, Africa, South America or Down Under? That makes her like them. She didn’t go to Harvard? Good for her! There a lot of hockey moms who haven’t seen London, but most of them would probably love to, if they had the dough. And they’d be proud if their kids won a scholarship to Harvard.

Palin is a shallow, chirpy person with those vaguely alarming eyeglasses. Now her fans all want a pair. Remember back when women wore glasses that departed their ears in plastic swoops and swirls? My theory is, anyone who wears glasses that look weird is telling me something I don’t want to know.

I trust the American people will see through Palin’s facade, and save the Republic in November. The most damning indictment against her is that she considered herself a good choice to be a heartbeat away. That shows bad judgment.

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Please, please don’t talk about how other candidates who have run have had less experience. There is, in fact, no person who has run for office who has had less experience. Even Quayle had more!

1. All copyright owned by Roger Ebert and the Chicago Sun Times ↩

This article in the NY Times makes a bunch of interesting points –

That woman will come from the South, or west of the Mississippi. She will be a Democrat who has won in a red state, or a Republican who has emerged from the private sector to run for governor. She will have executive experience, and have served in a job like attorney general, where she will have proven herself to be “a fighter” (a caring one, of course).

She will be young enough to qualify as postfeminist (in the way Senator Barack Obama has come off as postracial), unencumbered by the battles of the past. She will be married with children, but not young children. She will be emphasizing her experience, and wearing, yes, pantsuits.

Oh, and she may not exist.

Makes sense. And if not a Democrat, a liberal Republican.

“No woman with Obama’s resume could run,” said Dee Dee Myers, the first woman to be White House press secretary, under Bill Clinton, and the author of Why Women Should Rule the World. “No woman could have gotten out of the gate”.

Women are still held to a double-standard, and they tend to buy into it themselves.

Anyone disagree with the above? I don’t.

But for many women, whether or not they support Mrs. Clinton, the long primary campaign has left them with a question: why would any woman run?

Many feel dispirited by what they see as bias against Mrs. Clinton in the media — the “Fatal Attraction” comparisons and locker-room chortling on television panels.

“Who would dare to run?” said Karen O’Connor, the director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University. “The media is set up against you, and if you have the money problem to begin with, why would anyone put their families through this, why would anyone put themselves through this?”

For this reason, she said, she doesn’t expect a serious contender anytime soon. “I think it’s going to be generations.*”

What I really want is a strong Dem ticket that can beat McCain and at this point, Obama is going to head it. But let’s not dismiss the incredible media bias that has prevailed – it is easy to say that it is because it is Hillary and not just any woman. I don’t think that is entirely true. And that is depressing.

_{*The emphasis is mine.}

News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.

And the future of news is not bright. Indeed, we’ve heard that CBS may cut its news division, and media consolidation is leading to one-size-fits-all journalism. The state of political campaigning is no better: without a press to push them, candidates whose proposals are not workable avoid the tough questions. All of this leaves voters uncertain about what approach makes the most sense for them. Worse still, it gives us permission to ignore issues and concentrate on things that don’t matter. (Look, the press doesn’t even think there is a difference!)

Bowling 1, Health Care 0 – New York Times

By artist Ji Lee:

The USA has become increasingly evangelical in the recent history. This trend has a deep impact on the Washington politicians who often champion their christian convictions in order to appeal to their voters. This proposal for the new Washington Monument reflects the new christian nation that the US has become.

Hat tip: Shoot! The Blog

NY Times:

Some of the Internet chatter on Tuesday suggested that Ms. Wall Spitzer’s silent presence at her husband’s side represented a dark day for feminism, with one writer railing, “Someone needs to tell his wife that ‘stand by your man’ does not apply here!!! … She needs to have some pride.”

But others turned the feminist argument on its head, detecting ample sexism in the notion that Ms. Wall Spitzer was dragged to the podium against her wishes.

“To me, a lot of this commentary seems patronizing to her,” said Suzanne B. Goldberg, a professor of law at Columbia University and director of its Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic. “She might have felt this was the best strategy in a terrible situation for protecting her children or her own reputation. We have no basis for assuming that she’s a mere pawn here.”

I agree with the latter perspective. She’s a strong woman and is likely making what she thinks is the right choice for her family.

This post sums it up nicely:

It is one thing to walk out on your husband privately, another in a public forum.  I give Silda a huge amount of credit for standing up their on the podium with her husband.  Time will tell what decisions she makes for her future and her childrens but I am not sure you can do anything after 25 years but step back and be very methodical.  After all, her husband certainly hadn’t been thinking with his head.  Believe me, I’d leave but it would be so incredibly painful that I am not sure I would be willing to not stand by my man, for my children, at least for the moment.

[Updated] And here’s Charlie’s take on it – LOL!!

Dear Future Wife (Whoever she may be)

If you should discover that, after decades of marriage and a meteoric career, I have spent $80k on high priced hookers, please dump my ass…

…right on the street…

…in public…

…right in the middle of my press conference.

Do not be supportive.  I do not deserve it.

Do not keep my kids around me.  They’d be better off if I wasn’t around.

In the past 48 hours, the US Primaries have changed dramatically.

Hillary Clinton choked up

Bill Clinton spoke out

Gloria Steinem wrote a thoughtful piece on whether women can ever be front-runners¹:

Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.

:

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.

And Hillary and McCain both performed come-from-behind Houdini acts.

I am sure the front-runner in both the Republican and Democratic races is going to change often. I just hope we get candidates that, at a minimum, offer us hope of getting out of the complete and utter mess we are in right now.

1. If you think sexism isn’t alive and well, you should read about the guys who stood up at a Hillary campaign event and kept yelling at her to “Iron my shirt!” ↩