Sarah Palin is one of us now

Yep. She’s a racist, because she criticized Barack Obama. The AP says so.

By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is “palling around with terrorists” and doesn’t see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.
And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

Yes, AP writer Douglass K. Daniel has determined that Palin is making a “deliberate attempt to smear Obama.” But is it a smear if it’s true? If Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the Illinois state senate at the home of former Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and Obama worked with Bill Ayers in two different foundations over a period of years, and his opponents point out that he is friendly with them; is that a smear or is it simply a statement of fact? And what, pray tell, makes this statement “racially tinged?”

I’ll let Douglass K. Daniel of the Associated Press explain it all for us.

Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

Most troubling, however, is how allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves McCain’s purpose so well. As the fallout from Wright’s sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America’s promise to treat all people equally.

Well that’s about as clear as mud. Talk about a circular argument! First Daniel reads between the lines of what Palin said and decides that when she said the word “terrorist,” she really meant to imply that Obama hangs around with “dark-skinned, radical muslims.” Daniel apparently thinks that Americans are too stupid to know who the Weathermen were because it all happened {gasp!} 40 years ago. And then he makes Palin responsible for internet rumors that she never mentioned or even hinted at in her speech. Finally Daniel completes his sophomoric “analysis” by arguing that Obama should never be “forced to abandon issues to talk about race.”

Guess what? Palin never came close to referring to race in her speech. Why on earth should Obama have to address race in response? In fact I didn’t see any mention of race in his campaign’s response to Palin.

So now Palin is being hounded by the media and called a racist because she said something Barack didn’t like. Because he’s special. He’s supposed to get a pass on anything unsavory in his biography, while at the same time he is free to lie about his opponents. It’s perfectly all right that Obama implied that Sarah Palin is a pig, because…because…

I don’t know. Because the press and the power structure have anointed him as the inevitable next President? This is bulls&$#t!!  And I’ve had just about enough of it in the past year to last me three lifetimes.

A Tale from the Street: Why the 30 Percent Solution Is Important

Not the Only Role Model Anymore

Coming home from temple yesterday afternoon, I heard a father and his daughter talking as they walked past me. The daughter, who looked like she was in the tween years, was complaining about being short.

The father’s response took my breath away.

“Do you think Sarah Palin is tall? Do you think Hillary Clinton is tall?” he asked his daughter.

Wow. Female role models that aren’t six feet tall and 100 pounds with D-cup breasts. Can I get an Amen? 

Throughout the primary season, Hillary supporters were told how historic the election was for Barack Obama. We got it, believe me. In fact, some of us are AA or have AA friends and family (or both). The symbolic nature of his candidacy was evident.

But what about the historic nature of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy? What about the fact that 52% of Americans are women – that’s a MAJORITY, people – and have never seen ANYONE that looks like them ascend to the highest levels of power in the United States? Why is this impossible for anyone in the media or the Democratic Party to acknowledge?

We know the answer to that, don’t we, ladies? It’s never, EVER our turn. We are to step aside and let the important ones go first. If you have a penis, you may step to the head of the line, especially if you make sure to step over the little ladies on the way.

But John McCain made a bold move with his Vice-Presidential pick. He made it possible this year for us, the MAJORITY of Americans, to have our turn anyway, despite the disgusting machinations of Obama for America. And the endorsement of the head of the L.A. Chapter of NOW for McCain/Palin shows American women that the 30 Percent Solution can, and should, be supported by feminists of every political stripe, without fear or shame.

And that is something we can all look forward to, in these dark and confusing times.

Sunday: Revolution Roll Call

Cold feet.

The reality of the election is creeping up on us.  Creep is a perfect word because I am starting to see some of our number starting to have second thoughts.  Some of you feel you MUST make a decision.  It has to be final.  Convert or die.  Tell me, PUMAs, who is forcing you to commit to one candidate or another?  And what is wrong with ambiguity?  Rest assured, there *will* be a winner on November 4.  It will be decisive.  But there is no reason why either side should feel comfortable right now.  And there is certainly no reason for the Obamaphiles to threaten to put you to the sword.  You don’t owe them anything, not even a conversation if you don’t want one.

But there is still a decision to be made.  Let me tell you where I am right now.  In my mind, I am trying to reduce each campaign to a single descriptive word.  I’m still working on McCain’s, which I see as treading a very fine line, carefully avoiding mine fields that would upset the fragile coalition it is trying to assemble.  It is very cautious and yet there is an element of adventurousness in Sarah Palin that says “risk taker”.  Getting the right balance is very tricky.  On the Democratic side, there is one word that comes to mind and it’s very strong:
pernicious.

per·ni·cious (pr-nshs)
adj.
1.
a. Tending to cause death or serious injury; deadly: a pernicious virus.
b. Causing great harm; destructive: pernicious rumors.
2. Archaic Evil; wicked.

The election of Obama will be the death of the Democratic party. His campaign has been nothing short of astonishing in its destructive power. We thought the party was the party that supported equality for women. Not so. Obama’s campaign has pandered to the worst impulses in testosterone fueled young and middle aged guys and the women who want to be loved by them. By first unleashing a vicious attack on Hillary and now Sarah Palin, Obama supporters have set women in the public sphere back by decades. Will we see a return to the Mad Men era of diminishing women to sub-adult status? If we let Obama win, we might.

His campaign has also used racism as a weapon.  Racism is a serious problem but unlike sexism, our culture is much less tolerant to public displays of racism.  But this campaign season, we are witnessing a redefinition of racism to mean whatever Obama says it means.  Any criticism of him is filtered through a black and white filter.  Obamaphiles have hurled the racism label at us since before January with great success.  They have offended the political junkies and voting population.  I predict a backlash.  But what is even more astonishing is that now even among ourselves, “the shrieking hordes of paranoid holdouts”, we are starting to attack each other with the label when there is absolutely no racism or intent to discriminate. We are even alienating ourselves.  That is destruction I couldn’t have predicted a few months ago.

It doesn’t stop there.  The Obama campaign has purged the party of the elderly, the GLBT community and working people.  For years, the party was once the champion of these groups.  It was its distinguishing characteristic.  Now, the Obama campaign taps into the resentment of its new coalition towards the old coalition.  “Those people” are not worthy of protection or courtesy or even enfranchisement.  The Obama campaign makes it OK to treat them as less than human.

“Those people” are us.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us discussed how we could involve more people into the movement to reform the Democratic party.  We were wary of using the PUMA name because some groups felt squeamish about it and didn’t want to coexist under that umbrella, even though they were indistinguishable from us in every way.  Some of those people were rationalizing why they were different from us, as if there was a reason for why they needed to distance themselves.  The PUMA name, it seems, has become associated with all of the out groups of the old coalition.  We are the lunchtable where the stupid and the ugly people sit.  Well, I *know* we’re not stupid.

What’s wrong with getting old?  As my mother says, “it sure beats the alternative”.  It is an inescapable fact of life.  It will happen to Obamaphiles too.  Ooo, here’s an idea.  Next time you meet a young Obama campaign person, tell them they’re going to be 60 someday, if they’re lucky.  See what happens.

And what’s wrong with being a woman?  How about uneducated?  How many women my mother’s age were perfectly capable of excelling in college but never got the opportunity to go?  What’s wrong with being working class?  Most of the people in this country are working class.  I have one of those creative class jobs and I consider myself working class.  The working class has moved from the factories into the cube farm.  We still work with our hands, it’s just that now those hands touch keyboards instead of widgets.

But if we allow Obama to win, our power will be diminished, perhaps for generations.  And when I say “our” power, I mean most Americans.  If we allow Obama to win, we give our consent to stealing nominations by party manipulation.  We say that it is OK to conduct fraudulent elections, misleading voters about their self-determination.  We say it is OK to take taxpayer’s money to conduct sham primaries.  We give our permission to hooligans to be bussed in from other states to bully and intimidate voters during elections.  We capitulate to the diminishment of women, the elderly, working class people, gay people.  We participate in our own demise.

A few months ago, Dr. Violet Socks wrote one of the most insightful pieces of the whole election season.  In Archimedes Lever, she describes the situation we presently face.  We PUMAs and like minded people have a huge lever in front of us.  If we choose to throw that lever, we can change history.  We can bring this pernicious version of the Democratic party to its knees.  It is in the interests of the party to make us believe that we are helpless, that we can’t or shouldn’t pull the lever, hence the renewal of the haka against us.  The polls are going in Obama’s favor, they say.  We are racists, they shout.  We women are standing in the way of Obama’s victory.

Oh, really? How about this one: Obama is standing in the way of our personhood.  Obama stands in the way of our self-determination.  Obama stands in the way of our dignity and worth.  Friends, it is time we recognized our power, our amazing strength.  WE have the votes to swing this country in OUR election.  We have the ability to send this pernicious party apparatus to the level of Hell where it belongs.  We can give a new Democratic party four years to rebuild and put the remaining Democrats on notice that we expect them to represent US. We can start our own Revolution.

Are you with me, PUMAs?  Sound off.  Tell us which Great State you are voting from and what the power of your vote is going to do this November.