Oh, WOW! Murphy burns the house down.

This post, The Personal is NOT Political, will sear a hole in your monitor.  Here’s a sample but I encourage you to read the whole thing:

And how enormously stupid are we to have bought the lie that only “I” am a woman. That only “I” have the authentic experience and the true understanding of what it actually means to be a woman. Because I was raped; because I was passed over for a job promotion; because I’m a lesbian; because my father abandoned the family; because I couldn’t go to college; because I’m a single mother; because I’m black, or asian, or from the third world; because I’m a success in a man’s world; because I had a sex change operation; because I am a mother; because I had an abortion. Only “I” define womanhood and feminism and right thinking. Well, me and all my friends in my pretty little corner.

Why is the statement “The personal is political” a lie? Because of what the word personal means. It means our bodies and our beds. Pregnancy, breasts, motherhood, weight, ugliness, sex, sex, sex, and more sex, rape, abortion, birth control, marriage, weddings, wives, ex-wives, dumped wives, pornography. It puts the bit of womanhood between our teeth and sets us on an endless loop around the bedroom bridle path where the yellow wallpaper is just as mesmerizing but the presence of a few sister horses beside us makes us feel less lonely. The personal is political is a lie because it limits the scope of politics to a world comprised of stirrups and orgasms.

No thanks. Not until we spit the bit out of our mouths and take up our rightful identities as PERSONS will we see a woman in the White House. Not until we leave our god-forsaken beds back in our bedrooms where they belong and put our never-ending FEELINGS in a big black box with the inscription “ONLY OPEN IN TIME OF GREAT NEED” marked in deep gold lettering on the lid and store that private box on a shelf in our private closets of personal experience will we be anything more than the pathetic bunch of losers that men want us to believe we are.

The world’s greatest SWINDLE sent us to our bedrooms to look at ourselves naked in the mirror FOREVER and tricked us into thinking that our only importance to the world is what we think and how we feel about the image looking back at us.

Get with the program, ladies.  If you want to have power in this world, if you don’t want the Jon Favreaus of this world acting like an adolescent male hooligan while he pens Barack Obama’s speeches,

Jon Favreau (left), Obama's speechwriter, keepin' it classy

you are going to have to do like Lady MacBeth and unsex yourself, conjure the evil spirits and fill yourself with dire cruelty.  You need to harden your heart and practice cold blooded pragmatism.  You need to let the jabs and criticism roll off of you and learn how to run interference for each other instead of collaborating with the enemy.  And they ARE the enemy.  Not men per se, because there are a lot of women in on this, but the political system that has been created by men and custom.

This holiday season, go to that gender segregated party in your suburb, walk into the kitchen where the guys are all clustered around the keg of Sam Adams and express an opinion.  Hang out with the ladies in the family room who are talking about their menstrual cycles and their labor stories and say something completely unrelated, like, “Do you ever expect to see a woman president in your lifetime?”

Shake it up, baby.  It’s time.

The Law of Unintended? Consequences

Trust Me!

I’ve been doing a bit of research on Governor Janet Napolitano, and have read many contradicting things about her qualifications and ability to do the job of Director of Homeland Security. I just can’t get a bead on her, so I am adopting a “wait and see” attitude and hoping she will bring some fresh ideas, organizational ability, and competence to the position. I do like the fact that she is female, of course.

Unfortunately, her appointment may be a net negative for the population of Arizona – the pro-freedom population, that is (I use  the words “pro-freedom” and “anti-freedom” because “pro-choice” and “pro-life” are inaccurate and misleading, in my opinion.)

Should Janet Napolitano, Barack Obama’s pick for homeland security chief, be confirmed as expected by the Senate, Napolitano will need to step down from her current position as governor of Arizona.

The state has no lieutenant governor, and its laws dictate that the governor, who is a Democrat, be replaced by Secretary of State Jan Brewer – a Republican.

The Associated Press reports that Brewer, who would be governor through 2010, “had a reputation as a fiscal hard-liner and conservative on social issues while a legislator in the 1980s and 1990s, so her taking over the governorship would mean a new approach from Napolitano’s direction.”

Since governors are not members of a legislative body along the lines of the House or Senate, a shift from blue to red in the Arizona governor’s office doesn’t hold great national significance. There would be far more fanfare if a Senate seat was to switch hands due to an Obama cabinet selection, though such a scenario is extremely unlikely.

Hmmm…the new Governor, Jan Brewer, will be far more conservative with regard to “social issues.”  That sounds a bit ominous.

The CBS story doesn’t go into more details, perhaps because the story is not of “national significance,” or perhaps because the consequences of Jan Brewer’s ascendancy might be a bit more serious for pro-freedom advocates than the “news” outlet would like to admit. But hey – some folks are over the moon. Apparently Governor Napolitano has been a one-woman wall against a veritable tidal wave of anti-freedom state legislation, using her veto pen to protect womens’ rights time and again.

Now, that wall will be gone.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Incoming president Barack Obama has picked pro-abortion Gov. Janet Napolitano to become his new head of the Department of Homeland Security. (MB’s Note: They’re using “pro-abortion” now instead of “pro-choice.” I’m seeing this new frame more and more, and we should not allow it to pass unnoticed or unchallenged. It’s absolutely disgusting how these people manipulate the language to demonize women.) Napolitano constantly chagrined pro-life advocates with her vetoes of pro-life legislation and the pick may help get pro-life laws on the books there.

Napolitano would have to survive a Senate confirmation vote, which isn’t expected to be difficult despite some criticism of her on other issues.

Should she be confirmed, pro-life Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer would become the state’s next governor — which appears to be good news for pro-life groups.

That would put pro-life advocates in control of both the state legislature and the governor’s seat and would theoretically make it easier to get new laws on the books.

Napolitano has been a formidable obstacle as governor. She vetoed every piece of abortion legislation that has come across her desk — seven pro-life measures in total.

Friday F**ksticks

If the media hate her this much, she must be doing something right.  From the NYT:

Gov. Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist was paid $68,400 and her hair stylist received more than $42,000 for roughly two months of work, according to a new campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Ms. Palin’s makeup artist, Amy Strozzi — who was nominated for an Emmy award for her cosmetics work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?” — was paid $32,400 by Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign between Oct. 16 and Nov. 24, the period covered by the most recent reports filed with the commission.

This amount came on top of the $36,000 she had already been paid in previous reports, dating back to September.

In addition, Ms. Palin’s traveling hair stylist, Angela Lew, was paid a total of $42,225, with $23,400 coming during the period covered by the latest reports to the commission, which were due at midnight on Thursday.

None of the news reports claims that Governor Palin requested any of the clothes or services that were paid for by the McCain campaign.

Meanwhile, in other less important news, Barack Obama raised and spent over half a billion dollars during the same period, and can’t tell us where it all came from.

Markos Rex

How does a Poet speak to a king?
Protocol is very awkward a thing.
Your orange kingdom firmly you ruled,
Your subjects in your views were well schooled.

A governor in a campaign was sent,
Proposed as a female Vice President,
What right did your minions have to assume
That her child might be from her own daughter’s womb?

What sort of man would fail to demur
At letting proceed such an infamous slur?
One type alone would occur to my mind,
The man who his decency long left behind.

Your antics are daily upon us unfurled,
You spread your poison throughout the world,
To tear down, envenom and to destroy–
These be the tactics you would employ?

Of your worst enemy you played the role,
When you took the world in exchange for your soul,
At honor, just when was your last look–
Back when the Faustian bargain you took?

In sackcloth and ashes, cover your face,
You could return to a lost state of grace,
Sound advice is it the Poet has sent,
To take it, you need not wait for Great Lent.

Your head unburden of an unfitting crown,
Honor now be your indispensable noun,
Lay down your sceptre; vacate the throne,
A fallen king men are quick to disown.

Friday: Gov. Paterson, it’s CAROLYN, not Caroline

Carolyn Maloney, D-Manhattan

Lady Caroline Kennedy

I have read persistent rumors that Caroline Kennedy is on Governor Paterson’s short list of replacements for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat.  Now, I don’t live in NY.  I live in the next state down.  So, maybe Paterson doesn’t give a flying f^&* what I think, although our two states *do* share a common harbor and the WTC was a joint operation so you might say I am a concerned citizen.  Then there is the whole concept of the Senate itself, which is supposed to be a cooling saucer for hot blooded mob rule that is the House of Representatives (snort!).  The Senate is supposed to be a different kind of legislative body, one that by its very number and makeup is intended to transcend state boundaries.  So, the fact that we have only 17 females in this august body is very disturbing indeed and we can’t afford to lose even one.  Percentage wise, the Senate should be more like 52% female to 48% male and we are certainly going to work very hard to bring those numbers up.  But if the Governor plays a game where he appoints Caroline Kennedy because she meets the gender requirement, he might as well be sticking a fork in our eyes.

Why should he pass on Caroline?  Let me count the ways:

1. She’s not a politician.  Never has been.  She’s never run for political office, never advocated for legislation (that I know of), never even expressed an interest.  If Hillary were close to an election cycle, one might justify appointing Caroline as a symbolic gesture.  But Hillary has four years left in her term.  That would make Kennedy a rather strong incumbent.  She hasn’t earned it.
2. The Senate is not the House of Lords.  I know the argument against dynasties has also been made against Hillary’s run for president.  But in Hillary’s case, she did the whole campaigning thing.  She’s worked on health care throughout her tenure as first lady.  She went into the senate having *earned* her seat through a legitimate election and her own accomplishments.  We saw her on the campaign trail for president.  She is smart, tough, assertive, unflagging, eternally optimistic.  We *like* her.  Just because her husband was a president doesn’t mean we had to deprive ourselves of the best presidential candidate in the past 15 years.  But in Caroline Kennedy’s case, the name is everything.  She is the closest thing we have to an American princess.  She’s an aristocrat and nothing more.  Oh, sure, she’s a lawyer and she’s published books.  But for her, it almost like finishing school.  She chose to lead a more private life.  Good!  Let her enjoy it.
3. There are other women who would be passed over who would be legitimately and righteously indignant.  Kirsten Gillibrand and Carolyn Maloney are perfect examples.  For the upstate vote, Kirsten is the way to go.  She’s young, intelligent, well liked.  She’s very much in the Hillary model.  For experience, go to Carolyn Maloney, who has been elected from her Manhattan district *eight* times.  She has a track record of championing women’s issues.  For either of these true politicians who have earned their way to be queue jumped by Caroline Kennedy is a real slap to the face.

Wake up and smell the Starbucks, Governor Paterson.  You have an opportunity to earn some major mojo by appointing a woman who has *earned* that right through hard work and accomplishments.  Appointing a woman because of who she is and not what she has done further undermines women in the eyes of the public.  A woman’s accomplishments are always held to a higher standard than a man’s.  Caroline Kennedy would send the worst kind of message about women in politics.  Women will once again be beholden to male benefactors and not merit to get a seat at the table.  Forget about Lady Caroline and appoint Carolyn or Kirsten.

Do the right thing.

[UPDATE by katiebird] – And please take a minute to sign MadamaB’s petition: Appoint a Woman to Senator Clinton’s Seat