Friday: Cocco Puffs

Marie Cocco wrote a face slapping Hai Karate piece yesterday on the status of women.  The Glass Ceiling Still Holds is not for the feint of heart:

It is time to stop kidding ourselves. This wasn’t a breakthrough year for American women in politics. It was a brutal one.

The glass ceiling remains firmly in place — not cracked, as Hillary Clinton insisted as she tried to claim rhetorical victory after her defeat in the Democratic nominating contest. It wasn’t even scratched with the candidacy of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee — unless you consider becoming an object of national ridicule to be a symbol of advancement. As divergent as these two women are ideologically and temperamentally, as different as are their resumes, they both banged their heads — hard — against the ceiling. Both were bruised. So was the goal of advancing women in political leadership.

…

But, we are invariably told, surely there are enough women moving through the “pipeline” of lower offices so that someday, some woman from somewhere will win the presidency or the vice presidency. Well, here is how things stand: Eight women will serve as governors in 2009, the same as this year. The proportion of women serving in statewide elective office actually has dropped since it reached a high of about 28 percent in 2000; it is now about 24 percent, according to the center.

Yes, ladies, we have actually *lost* ground.  There will likely never be another Hillary Clinton in our lifetime.   That’s because in order to get to Hillary’s stature, a woman will have to be in the public sphere for a long time so that the electorate can achieve a kind of comfort level with her.  There aren’t any women coming up that are going to have those opportunities.  Most Americans don’t even know who Nancy Pelosi is and those who do would like her to grow a spine.  Katherin Sebelius?  She’s as washed out and flavorless as a politician can be.  Besides, these women are not on TV everyday, doing things, whether you like those things or not.  The thing Clinton had going for her was seen as a liability by her party- her ability to polarize people.  She was a well known commodity. The public watched her grow from a first lady to a senator. You either loved her or hated her. But during the campaign season, even the people who thought they hated the Clintons came to have a grudging respect for her.

There is a section of Cocco’s piece that I take issue with:

Those who watched the media’s sexist hazing of both Clinton and Palin often rationalize this treatment as the result of these two candidates’ particular personalities and the legitimacy — or presumed illegitimacy — of their campaigns. But Barbara Lee, whose Boston-based family foundation has conducted extensive research of gubernatorial races involving women, routinely identifies the same undercurrents in state campaigns. Voters demand more experience of a woman candidate, and judge her competence separately from whether she is sufficiently “likable.” Male candidates typically must clear only the competence bar to be judged — as Obama indelicately put it during a primary debate — “likable enough.”

“We heard that over and over again — that no woman is ever right,” Lee says of her focus groups. “They like the concept of it but when it comes to a real, live, breathing candidate, they don’t.”

The problem was not voters.  The problem was that the media didn’t like her, her own party didn’t like her.  And what do these two entities consist of anyway?  From what I can tell, they are overwhelmingly white, late middle aged men.  Is it any wonder that they were not Hillary fans?  Maybe this in part explains the strange phenomenon of Hillary winning primaries after the media had pronounced her dead.  The institutions that arrayed against her were anachronisms.  Their pronouncements didn’t resonate with the millions of men and women who are in the rest of the workforce and who grew up, got educated and clawed or are clawing their way up the corporate ladder.  In the REAL world, women still have it tough but they have cracked a lot more glass ceilings than they have in the boardroom of GE or the Democratic party inner circle.

The party could have won easily with Hillary.  She inspired confidence, capability, intelligence and intestinal fortitude.  This was her year.  It was OUR year and it was brutally suppressed by a bunch of fricking neanderthals who refused to evolve.

They’ve got to go.

Early Friday Open Thread

Mommy, what's "patriarchy" mean?

Caption this photo

Nitecap and Conflucians Say

I don’t know about you guys but I’ve had a harrowing day.  It’s been very busy at work lately.  It’s like they expect me to find the cure for cancer or something.  And this week is when the onerous parent teacher conferences start.  Let’s just say that as much as I admire teachers’ organizational skills and willingness to spend their lives trapped in a classroom with 20+ tyrants, we differ on matters of pedagogy.  My Brook is definitely a rhombus to a round hole.  Her sister was sooooo much easier…

So, I am unwinding tonight at Joe’s.  He’s the one with the long bar, lovingly polished every night until it gleams.  There are dark little niches where you can collect your friends around round tables.  The entertainment tonight is eclectic.  It’s a little French, a little jazz, a soupçon of classical.   The singer’s range isn’t extraordinary but the tune is light and refreshing.  I don’t want to go to work.  I don’t want to eat.  I just want to sit in a dark little corner and melt into my chair.

Don’t forget Conflucians Say at 10PM EST where you can let your hair down and relax with friends.  Only on PUMA United Radio, PURrrrr.

Thursday: Potpourri

Potpourri

There’s so much going on today, I couldn’t pick just one topic. So, here’s what’s banging around in my brain:

Feminism: Dead? And if so, what next for women?

The incredible Dr. Violet Socks has a very interesting discussion going on about feminism and where it goes from here. I personally would like to adopt the framing “Pro-Woman” to replace the restrictive language of “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” There are plenty of people who do not want abortions, but who have no interest in preventing other women from getting them. They do not fit either category, and I have been reading many of their comments online about how they have felt excluded from the feminist movement. This is unfair and unnecessary, and should we adopt the words “pro-woman” to describe ourselves in the future, perhaps a more inclusive version of feminism could be promulgated.

Daschle as HHS Secretary?

This selection makes me nervous. Daschle’s record on reproductive issues is poor. He only received a 50% rating from NARAL, and even anti-contraception jackoffs like Joe “Short Ride” Lieberman have scored consistently higher than that – sometimes receiving a rating of 100%, as in 2007.

Why is this so important? Because of the actions of the current HHS Secretary, in service of Teh Deciderer. Not Your Sweetie has the details:

A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job-discrimination laws.

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to “assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity” financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Now just think about this for a second. You are a health professional. It is your job to dispense birth control, work on stem cell research, perform abortions. Yet you decide your “conscience” prevents you from doing your job. Does your boss have the right to fire you? Why, no. And what about the woman who wants the abortion or birth control? Shit out of luck.

This is the type of hypocritical bullshit that pisses me off in the extreme. If you don’t want to do your job, YOU’RE FIRED. Someone else who has a modicum of integrity and decency can be hired in your place. You can feel free to have your religious beliefs, but you do NOT have the right to destroy peoples’ lives because of them. The fact that I would even have to make this case in the 21st Fucking Century is simply appalling.

No, the sole purpose of this 13th-century HHS Rule is to further remove womens’ rights to control their own reproductive organs and health. And so help me Gawd, the second Mr. Daschle takes office, we should do a coordinated action to ask him to overturn this rule IMMEDIATELY. (Before you trolls jump all over me (whoops! too late!), Barack Obama has signed a letter, written by Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray, opposing this rule. Ostensibly, he is against it. But will his actions mirror his words?)

This is the point of no return for me. If Daschle does not overturn that rule, then it will be clear that he was put into that seat in order to further the Bush jihad against womens’ rights. I dearly hope that will not turn out to be the case.

A nation of laws?

Detainees at Gitmo

From SCOTUSBLOG:

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, in the first ruling to carry out the Supreme Court’s June decision on detainees’ rights, ordered the federal government to release five Guantanamo Bay detainees “forthwith.” The judge found, however, that the government had justified the continued imprisonment of a sixth detainee, Belkacem ben Sayah.

The judge, in an unusual added comment, suggested to senior government leaders that they forgo an appeal of his ruling on freeing the five prisoners, suggesting that “seven years is enough” in captivity. He argued that the government could pursue whatever legal issues it wished to while defending on appeal his ruling in the case of ben Sayah.

As you might expect, this story has some rightwingers’ panties all twisted:

Getting judges involved in national security matters, what could go wrong?

Back to SCOTUSBLOG:

The six prisoners were captured in Bosnia, where they had been living, although they are all natives of Algeria.

In ruling against the government as to the five detainees, Judge Leon said that the Justice Department and intelligence agencies had relied solely on a classified document, which he found was not persuasive on the government’s claim that the five had planned to travel to Afghanistan to join in hostile actions against the United States and allied forces.

I find it extremely disturbing that the United States government asserts that it has the authority to arrest and imprison Algerian nationals arrested in Bosnia for the alleged crime of planning to travel to Afghanistan to fight our troops.  Even more disturbing is the fact that our government wants to do so without providing the defendants with due process of law.

These men have been imprisoned for seven years based on a single classified document.  German and Japanese prisoners of war were released shortly after hostilities ceased in WWII (except for those accused of war crimes) but these men have been imprisoned far longer than any POW we ever held, and were probably subjected to “enhanced interrogation.”  IIRC, the “detainees” at Gitmo were all supposed to be “the worst of the worst.”

No wonder the Bush adminstration has tried so hard to deprive these people of due process.  Everytime these “dangerous terrorists” manage to get a fair tribunal to look at their cases the evidence against them turns out to be vitually non-existent.  Under these facts, I don’t see how we could assert legal authority over these men in the first place, even if the charges were true.

From Wikipedia:

Since October 7, 2001, when the current war in Afghanistan began, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantánamo. Of these, approximately 420 have been released without charge, with only one prisoner, David Hicks, being convicted of a crime.

Thursday: SOS

SOS.  Does it mean ‘Secretary of State’ or is it the international distress symbol?

Last night, on Lions Share, Sheri asked us to predict what is going on with Obama’s offer to Clinton of Secretary of State.  I think we can all assume now that a genuine offer was made.  I don’t know what’s going on with the media types immediately indulging in a feast of Clinton bashing but I think they should know by now that it only works with the stupid Obots.  The regular folks out there know the media has some kind of irrational hatred of the Clintons and they trust Bill and Hill much more than they trust the New York Times editorial page columnists.

So what is going on with the SOS position?  I can’t really say except that it is really a waste of time for the rag of record to be going on and on about Bill’s divestiture of his foreign contacts.  He would have done that if Hillary was elected as well.  I suspect that if Hillary is considering this seriously, she’s holding out for some measure of autonomy.  And if Obama is trying to make her say no by burdening her with too many conditions, I think it will backfire.  The longer it takes for him to settle it, the more time she is in the news and the more people are going to wonder why she’s getting the shaft in the Senate while Tom Daschle gets all of the credit as Secretary of HHS for writing a book last February on the healthcare crisis.  I’m searching my memory banks for evidence of his expertise from his Senate days and I am seriously drawing a blank.  More and more it looks to me that there is a concerted effort to keep Hillary as far away from healthcare as possible.  Yes, it is that obvious.

So, what’s in it for Hillary?  Well. the country’s reputation has suffered a significant blow under the Bushie administration.  I can imagine that a person of Clinton’s stature would be very welcome.  She would be America’s foreign president while Obama can stay at home and tackle domestic issues he knows nothing about.  I suspect that the post would make her stature rise and she would outshine him once more.  Even the hateful media would be forced to cover her and people would once again see right through the rotten, nasty, crap coverage she is bound to get.  Hey, she was still winning primaries up until the very last day even after the media told her it was over.  What does that tell us?

As for international distress symbols, we learn today that companies are asking to not have to contribute to our pension funds until the economic crisis is over.  Niiiiice!  Those pension funds have only lost $250 billion lately.  Couple that with the loss of 401k funds and I am really looking forward to spending my golden years with Brook.

I can remember telling my mother not to vote for Bush- both times,  I knew he was going to rob us blind but did she listen?  Did the entire country listen?  I share the Europeans shock that we re-elected him, knowing what kind of person he was.  It seems increidble that the country could be hoodwinked into voting for a person so obviously a kleptocrat and hostile to government.  I didn’t think we could ever make a mistake of that magnitude again.  But with “the New New Deal is off the table” Obama, we may have met Bush’s equal.

Wednesday-Thursday Zombie Shift Open Thread

What’s your favorite zombie flick?

Lions Share tonight at 8PM EST on PURrrr

Join Darragh, Sheri and me as we talk about Hillary as Secretary of State, the blogosphere flipping out over Clinton admin 2.0, the latest news and why it’s so fricking cold in New Jersey if we have a Global Warming problem.

That’s Lions Share at 8PM EST on PUMA United Radio, (PURrrr)

Brad Paisley w/ Hank Jr.

This is dedicated to Gender Analysts and the morans at cranky christina’s crappy blog who threatened to “expose” me.

myiq2xu March 15th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Rodney Carrington Live at the Majestic is on the Comedy Channel.
“I went home with a fat girl once a bunch of times.”

Yeppers, I posted that.  Now excuse me, I gotta go do some manly stuff.

Seven Score and Five Years Ago

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg

On November 19, 1863, some skinny dude from Illinois gave a speech:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

They don’t make ’em like that anymore.

(h/t Helenk)