Day: June 10, 2008

Hillary And The Future Of Other Women Candidates

I have been asking since May 31st of why the anger and hatred.  That I understand disappointment, but if they are truly Democrats why would they consider voting for a Repub that has nothing in common with their issues?  So far NO ONE has stepped forward to answer my questions, so I can only assume that there is NO good reason why they would vote for McCain.

With that off my chest, I found this article by Katha Politt of the Nation magazine.

Hillary Clinton came this close. In fact, as of this writing, she hasn’t formally conceded. Nobody really understands why: why she stuck it out this long, given the math, and why she gave such a grudging, graceless version of her stump speech after the South Dakota primary clinched the nomination for Barack Obama. Suggestions I’ve heard are not very flattering: she hopes to whittle down her multimillion-dollar campaign debt with donations from the deluded die-hards screaming Denver! Denver! She wants the number-two spot. She’s a crazy narcissistic rhymes-with-rich. Maybe she’s just ticked off because pundits have been trying to hustle her off the stage ever since her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

Some think Clinton’s loss, and the psychodrama surrounding it, will set women back. I think they’re wrong. Love her or loathe her, the big story here is Americans saw a woman who was a serious, popular, major-party candidate. Clinton showed herself to be tough, tireless, supersmart and definitely ready to lead on that famous Day One. She raised a ton of money and won 17.5 million votes from men and women. She was exciting, too: she and Obama galvanized voters for six long months — in some early contests, each of them racked up more votes than all the Republican candidates combined. Once the bitterness of the present moment has faded, that’s what people will remember. Because she normalized the concept of a woman running for President, she made it easier for women to run for every office, including the White House. That is one reason women and men of every party and candidate preference, and every ethnicity too, owe Hillary Clinton a standing ovation, even if they can’t stand her.

There’s another reason to be grateful to her. Clinton’s run has put to rest the myth that we are living in a postfeminist wonderland in which all that stands in women’s path is women themselves. Like a magnet — was it the pantsuit? — Clinton drew out the nation’s misogyny in all its jeering glory and put it where we could all get a good look at it. “Iron my shirt” hecklers. Wearers of Bros Over Hos T-shirts and buyers of Hillary nutcrackers. Fans of the Citizens United Not Timid website (check the acronym). Vats of sexist nastiness splattered across the Comments section of hundreds of blogs and websites. It’s as if every obscene phone caller and every exhibitionist in America decided to become an amateur political pundit.

As for the real pundits, thank you, Hillary, for showing us the snickering belittling of women that passes for media commentary: Rush Limbaugh, no Adonis, wondering out loud if “the country” was ready to watch a woman age in the White House; Chris Matthews, Don Imus and Tucker Carlson with their litany of insults — she-devil, Satan, witch, Antichrist, Lady Macbeth. NPR’s Ken Rudin compared her to Glenn Close’s indestructible bunny-boiler character in Fatal Attraction. And surely a special prize goes to Keith Olbermann for his indignant, hysterical bombast after Clinton’s ham-handed reference to RFK’s assassination. Rarely has men’s terror of women with more brains than a Bratz doll been on such public display. And, of course, men were what we mostly saw up there on the small screen, yakking and blathering away.

It wasn’t just men, though. Thank you, Hillary, for letting us get a good look at female sexism: the catty fashionistas and Style page dingbats obsessing over her clothes, her hair, her weight, her cleavage, her laugh. Air America’s Randi Rhodes calling her a “big fucking whore,” Maureen Dowd offering up her twice-weekly dose of vinegar and dozens of women writers musing prettily about why they and their friends all hate Hillary. Could it be they’re jealous? Not, as novelist Mary Gordon has suggested, of Hillary’s bagging of sexy Bill (yuck) but of her unsinkable ambition and drive. Hillary’s run upset the carefully balanced apple cart of trade-off and resignation and semi-suppressed frustration that is how women of the professional class accommodate to patriarchy lite.

Please note: I don’t claim Clinton lost because she’s a woman. (I think it was her Iraq vote, which she could never justify or renounce; assorted strategic mistakes; the bumptious interventions of her husband; and, most of all, that Barack Obama, a prodigiously gifted, charismatic politician, took the banner of change away from her.) The attacks on her may even have helped by making women voters identify with her. In New Hampshire, pols’ and pundits’ sexist mockery of her “misting” made women rally to her side and revitalized her campaign.

Now those women, not all white and not all working class, are on the political map, and so are the issues that made them identify with Clinton: the glass ceiling and the sticky floor, the inequality built into marriage and family life, sexual harassment and assault, lack of support for caring work — paid or unpaid — and, underlying them all, a fundamental lack of respect that over the years can make a woman feel fed up to here. It’s an irony of this campaign that Clinton was seen by the pundit class as a kind of über-diva whose attempts to reach out were transparently phony (beer and Canadian Club, anyone?) and yet millions of ordinary women–white, Latino and black–saw their struggles mirrored in hers. I won’t deny that there’s racism and xenophobia in the mix for some–hatred of Obama as affirmative action trickster and secret Muslim. It’s incredibly important for Clinton to do the right thing and rally these women to Obama, and I wish I felt surer that she would rise to the occasion.

She could begin by pointing out that Obama is pro-woman and prochoice and as President will pursue policies to benefit all women — on labor, healthcare, sexual violence and many other issues. She could tell her supporters a vote for McCain is crazy. She could even tell them that a biracial man in the White House will make it easier for voters to imagine other nontraditional kinds of Presidents — like the next woman who decides to run.

Whoever that woman is, though, she’d better have the hide of a rhinoceros.

A very interesting read and a bit long winded by all in all excellent piece.

To Journalists: What Now?

I have had a few comments from journalist and how much that some of them dislike bloggers…but the way I see it …….is their problem not mine!  But beyond that, I have a few questions that I would like answered by journalists.

Primaries are over–may I get an AMEN?–now the Repubs and the Dems can discuss what is important–the ISSUES.  Damn!  Wrong again!  The media seems to not want to talk about the issues.  The pundits, almost to the person, is still focused on Clinton’s supporters and her wins in KY, WV, PA, yada yada.  The media is fixated on hindsight and in doing so the voter is learning nothing of substance.  But yet, the media keeps saying how important the issues are and how diverse the candidates are.  But I guess the issues are not important enough to cover and inform.

Clinton won big in the closing days of the primaries, but what does that mean now?  NOT A DAMN THING!  She lost and analyzing that to death will not change the outcome–she still loses!  They, the media, is spending all their waking hours trying to decide who will vote for who and why. but seldom are they talking about issues, instead gender, race age and other assorted crap are covered.

Why not let them, the caandidates, talk and debate real issues and then the pundits can check with the mamby pamby polls and tell us who is winning and why.  Just a thought.

Instead of moving forward with the candidates and their positions they, the media, spend countless hours on worthless speculation and analysis.  They seem to resist looking forward to the general election and the issues.

Teamsters Walk Off The Job

About 1,250 employees of Michigan-based car hauler Performance Transportation Services Inc. have walked off their jobs at 24 facilities in the United States.

The walkout at plant sites, ports and rail heads in more than a dozen states began Monday morning and may have an indirect impact on the company’s transborder operations to Canada, although the union hasn’t struck the Canadian locations.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters says it’s protesting an emergency 15-per cent pay cut granted by a U.S. bankruptcy court judge and what the union calls unfair labour practices.

PTS chief executive Jeff Cornish says the cuts are necessary to compete as the company reorganizes in Chapter 11 protection under the U.S. bankruptcy code.

He says the company is seeking a court injunction to bring the workers back.
Bell said he didn’t know how long the strike would last, but was “optimistic.”

Allen Park-based Performance Transportation Services delivers more than four million new and used cars annually.

Anti-War Activist Demand Equal Time

This article was published in the Army Times.

Peace activists want equal access to Los Angeles high schools to counter military recruiters they describe as “car salesmen” bent on meeting quotas.

The Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools says it’s vital for students to have unvarnished information about military service. The coalition promotes nonviolent alternatives to military service.

Group coordinator Arele Inouye says recruiters “have a quota and it’s their job to get students to sign up. So just like a car salesman, they’re going to say everything they can to get students to sign up.”

The group’s access proposal could be considered by the school board next month.

Last month, Los Angeles Unified School District administrators said they could not order high schools to give the group access. Inouye was instead urged to meet with principals and others at the schools.

The question is:  should anti-war positions be taught or discussed in schools?

A Softer, More Gentle Chavez?

The armed revolutionary has no place in modern Latin America, the Venezuelan President has declared. Catching his critics off guard, Hugo Chavez called on the Marxist rebel army in neighbouring Colombia to lay down its arms and release its hostages, declaring that guerrilla armies are now “out of place”.

Adopting the mantle of international statesman, the Venezuelan President appeared to be stepping forward finally to turn a page of history for a continent that for decades has been blighted by eruptions of insurgent violence, not just in Colombia but also Nicaragua and El Salvador. As most of those conflicts have come to an end, Colombia has been alone in failing to end its own internal strife.

In his statement, Mr Chavez offered a reason of his own to bring Farc’s campaign to an end, pointing to the US. “You in the Farc should know something,” he offered. “You have become an excuse for the empire to threaten all of us.” He often uses the term “empire” to refer to the United States. Washington has made no secret of its desire to isolate Mr Chavez from other governments in Latin America.

Kucinich To Call On The House For Impeachment

The Ohio representative outlined his intention to propose more than two dozen charges against Bush on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Kucinich, a former presidential candidate, accused Bush executing a “calculated and wide-ranging strategy” to deceive citizens and Congress into believing that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she opposes trying to remove the Republican president who leaves office next January because such an attempt would be divisive and most likely unsuccessful.
Kucinich, an outspoken Iraq war critic who has consistently voted against funding the war and led anti-war efforts in Congress, offered a resolution to impeach Vice president Dick Cheney in April 2007. That also failed to move forward.

Many Democrats and civil liberties groups have accused the Bush administration of providing misleading information before the 2003 Iraq invasion as well as violating the rights of U.S. citizens with its warrantless surveillance program. The White House denies the charges

Now I would like to hear what others think.  Personally, I want all aspects of this BS to come to light.  Someone has to be held accountable for the deaths of 4000+ Americans.