I have no wish to pollute Lance's place with partisan-within-partisan politics, so I'll do it here.  A commenter over there says:

From the tears to the whining to the employment of the bludgeon of fear as if Rove himself were creating [Clinton's] campaign ads, she's made me queasy. The queasiness began, actually, about 2 years ago, when her presidential ambitions were first being whispered about, and she suddenly appeared at a Congressional hearing without her traditional neck scarf but with a honking great gold cross around her neck. Can anyone say "pander"?

And from that moment onward I think that she has been about as naked a political animal as it's possible to be. Even more naked than Bill (whom I loved), because she lacks his compensatory charisma. And when, recently, she pulled out that "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen" line on Obama, as if none of us remembered that a scant month or so ago she was kvetching about unfair coverage in the middle of a freakin' debate--to the point that SNL parodied it--that was pretty much it for me. That's when I decided that I couldn't in good conscience support her. Because she disgusts me.

Oh, if she ends up being the candidate against McCain, of course I'll vote for her. But it will be with me holding my nose. If Obama becomes the candidate, I'll vote with bated breath, too, but it will be from anticipation, expectation, and a touch of anxiety.

1) As if Obama's anti-war speech weren't somehow politically motivated?  Please.

2) As I recall, Clinton wasn't kvetching about the debates, nor the fact that she received most of the pertinent questions first, until after SNL offered the junior Senator from Illinois a pillow, at which point she did, admittedly call attention to that fact.

3)  Both the president and his current SecDef Robert Gates have shed actual tears in recent days.  Unless one is prepared to castigate them for womanish emotionalism, one should probably refrain from beating up Hillary Clinton because her voice broke while on the campaign trail.

One would think women would be done with calling other women to account for tears of frustration, but apparently such is not always the case.

4) As far as the bludgeon of fear, I assume we are directed to the ad depicting national and international crises faced by our current Raggedy Andy during his administration.  I may have mistakenly believed his bumbles fair game for our party to question; I may mistaken have believed that a woman could claim equal ground with men in terms of being prepared for such disasters; I was not aware, however, that calling the man's experience into question was automatic grounds for dismissal. 

If Obama wins, so be it, but one has to wonder at his doing so through typical dog-whistle politics.  Can't he beat her without the crap?  And if not, doesn't that put the lie to the idea that she *only* wins when stoopid, old, dried-up white girls vote for her?  I mean, I'll admit I'm not alone, but there just aren't that many idiot racist old white crones out there.

Oh, and by the same token, if Obama wins, I'll hold my nose and vote, but I won't like it.  Not like I once hoped, anyway.

Senator Obama is, without doubt or reasonable debate, an inspiring speaker.  Most politicians could only dream of his facility with words, or the firebreak it seems to buy him.

Congrats on Pa.

 

In case you couldn't tell, I like Hillary Clinton.  I always have, from the moment she brazenly suggested that first ladies could be more than window dressing, to the moment she acknowledged the "vast right-wing conspiracy" anyone with half a (left) eye had already seen, to the moment she decided "standing by your man," could be the better part of valor, to the moment she announced her candidacy for this nation's highest office.  I have sent contributions; I have written letters.  I genuinely like the woman.  I even like Bill.  I wouldn't want to be married to him, but he was a good president, if not a good husband, and based on his politics, I like him.

Which is why this is difficult to say.

The two biggest problems with the Senator's campaign have been her husband and her staff.  Bill's re-dust-up over the South Carolina comments do his wife no favors.  He's not actually running for president, mind you, but it is difficult for the population at large to separate the two.  And he is larger than life; he throws a long shadow.  I would hope the former president would start being as careful of his wife's campaign as he was of his own - if not for her sake, or ours, at least for the sake of his own legacy, which has admittedly been tarnished of late.

And then there is Hillary's staff.  Whoever suggested she use the word "obliterate" on air should be fired.  The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction worked during the Cold War, and the idea of preemptive threat (as opposed to preemptive war) is well-established as both acceptable and tenable.  Couching it in such, forgive the pun, explosive terms, however, is not. 

Senator Clinton went on, of course, to explain her position in detail (via TalkLeft, with worthy commentary), but the detailed, cogent, viable explanation doesn't make for the headlines "obliterated" does.  This is campaign 101 - don't let the soundbite overpower the actual message.  It should enhance and entrance, not smash and grab.

I still hope to be able to vote for Hillary in the general, but such mistakes make this more difficult than it ever needed to be, particularly given the proclivity of certain segments of our population to always assume the worst of any Clinton, irrespective of anything as niggling as facts.

"You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain," [Senator Barack] Obama said to cheers from a rowdy crowd in central Pennsylvania. Then he said: "And all three of us would be better than George Bush."  AP, via Google

No.  McCain would not be better than George Bush.  McCain would, perhaps, be even worse - precisely because he's managed to cock up a veneer of credibility that Bush couldn't even dream of at this point, let alone manufacture.  This thin coat of synthetic authenticity would allow McCain to further solidify the authoritarian leanings of the neo-con cabal and to play Al Capone to Bush's John Torrio, a surface Robin Hood with all of the emotional depth of Tony Soprano, doing whatever needs to be done to protect the rackets.

Perhaps What Obama Really Meant^TM was that Senator McCain would be better than Bush at hoodwinking most Americans while actually giving them the finger in a code only the faithful could understand.  That much is likely true, if that is indeed What Obama Really Meant^TM.

...that portrays all who would prefer otherwise, given a choice between a white woman and an African-American man, as de facto racists - as if the woman had nothing to bring to the table outside of her race.

...that would assume anyone who had another first choice was a bigot.

...that believes that all who do not support it from the outset are either stupid or uneducated.

...that states that supporting an alternate in the same party means holding onto religious mythology for dear life - particularly when some are of the much-despised atheist non-class of quasi-citizenry (moi, merci beaucoup, vous le morceau de merde).

...that suggests that only stupid, willfully ignorant, racist idiots could possibly find any other candidate in the same fucking party even remotely attractive.

...that believes that 30 minute meals are inherently less satisfying than Chef Ripert's.

I love Ripert, and what's more, I can actually make his recipes - to a tee, fuck you very much. It just so happensI don't make my living as a chef, so I'm also very well acquainted with the 30 minute stoup.

Guess which recipes get used on a more regular basis, you high-and-mighty so-called "progressives?"  I'm a pro-choice, opposed to the death penalty, all for single-payer health care, firm believer in a progressive (if ostensibly flat-) tax, anti-torture, pro-liberty, motherfucking patriotic, salute-the-flag, father-in-law Vietnam (2 tours) and-proud-of-it (him and me) Marine, American.

I'm also a work-outside-the-home mother of two, with one of the boys needing therapy twice a week, who also needs to get dinner on the table.  I'm enamored of Ripert and Bayless and Colicchio and Desauliniers, but it's Ray and Deen and and Joy of Cooking, and my own mom, who make it onto my table more often than not - because they speak to how I live.

And I have a fucking college degree.  So bite my degreed, Nascar-hating ass.

...this has been a Public Service Announcement from Kiosan, who is fed up to *here* with the Obama mythology, merci beaucoup monsieurs et mademoiselles, so sayeth the toothless rube.

   As IndyRobin notes at Shakesville:

Reading through the comments and want you to know that this video was NOT just about sexism ... it is about

Character assassination:
[it] is an intentional attempt to influence the portrayal or reputation of a particular person, whether living or a historical personage, in such a way as to cause others to develop an extremely negative, unethical or unappealing perception of him or her. By its nature, it involves deliberate exaggeration or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person. For living individuals, this can cause the target to be rejected by his or her community, family, or members of his or her living or work environment. Such acts are typically very difficult to reverse or rectify, therefore the process is likened to a literal assassination of a human life. The damage sustained can be life-long and more, or for historical personages, last for many centuries after their death

Senator Clinton has come out with a new NC Ask Me ad in North Carolina.  I like the premise - eschewing all of the punditocracy and blogospheric hype and getting down to brass tacks, as it were:

So, how do you think Clinton Rules will apply here?  Does she actually say something evil if you play the video backwards in a tornado while sucking on a pudding pop?

I'm assuming that most anyone who stumbles upon one of my political posts, and who has read thus far, is aware of the Bill Richardson (Gov., D-NM) endorsement flap.  On the off-chance I have a new reader whom I've entranced with my sublime turn-of-phrase, but who is as yet unfamiliar with the give-and-take peculiar to his endorsement of Senator Obama for President of the United States, I offer links.

Rather than offer a lengthy post on the merits (or demerits) of the various arguments, or the spuriousness of the claim that Judas was far worse because he turned in the physical location of his supposed friend at a most auspicious time for the opposition, rather than turning on his supposed friend at a most auspicious time for the opposition, or the question of whether or not 30 pieces of silver must translate exactly, or whether James Carville ever has anything substantive to say sans Cajun spice, I will simply ask this:

In today's hot-wired, plugged-in, always-on world, why hasn't Governor Richardson publicly fired (or allowed to resign) the person in charge of relaying his messages?  You know, the person who's supposed to tell him, even when he's on "vacation," of the important stuff that goes on, like say floods, or earthquakes, or school shootings - or when the former President of the United States leaves several messages?

Me?  I'd lose the slacker who couldn't be bothered to relay that message.  Particularly since the State of New Mexico press site seems to indicate no week between Feb 3, 2008 (the Superbowl) and March 21 (the endorsement) when the Governor was totally out of pocket.

He signed legislation; he vetoed legislation; he made statements and held legislative hours, yet never received a single phone message?

Odd, that, don't you think?

I do believe I have fallen through the looking glass.  Up is down, down is up, frogs rain down and bark at me with their beady little ears.

Funny, I don't recall dropping acid.

So many sites I once thought of as bastions of sanity, lost to me; covered in the ash of a needless, senseless, useless implosion.  Stop, people, just stop.

A year ago it was only the conservatives who vilified Hillary Clinton as a baby-eating, do-anything-to-win, non-cookie-baking, stand-by-your-man, lying, frigid whore.  Now everyone’s jumped on the blinder bandwagon.

Enough. 

Enough with the piling on.  Enough with the Clinton Rules.  Enough with the automatic assumption that Hillary is the Bride of Satan and that everyone who doesn’t hate her is a traitor.  We had 8 long, terrible years of that under Bush, and I have had more than my fill – particularly from my own side of the political equation.  Do we really need to stoop so low to prove we are no different from those we once claimed to despise?

I know I’m just one tiny, tiny blogger back in the fray after a very long absence; Iam nobody, and I know it’s extremely unlikely anyone’s paying attention – but I hope somewhere, someone hears my plea – because I'm really tired of seeing us eat our own with such utter joy and total, reckless abandon, and I really cannot imagine that I am as alone as I feel.

Contrary to what Senator McCain seems to think, the problem with private health insurance is not that healthy people cannot get it.

According to an LA Times story covering Elizabeth Edwards’ reaction to the McCain plan, McCain’s plan proposal would exempt health insurers from having to cover those with pre-existing conditions like melanoma or breast cancer.  Senator McCain, as someone who suffers from melanoma, would therefore likely be ineligible for private coverage.  Whatever coverage he could manage, were he Joe Blow instead of The Straight Talk Express, would certainly exclude melanoma and any related illnesses or conditions from covered treatment.

Further, Senator McCain wants to “encourage competition” by allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines.  The Edwardses are concerned, and rightfully so, I say, that this would allow health insurers to move their headquarters into states with relatively loose consumer protections, much as credit card companies have done.  Combine this with McCain’s intention to block “frivolous lawsuits” (since by GOP standards, most lawsuits against big business are “frivolous,” regardless of actual basis), and we have recipe for consumer disaster. 

Additionally, McCain’s plan calls for making employer-sponsored healthcare taxable income.  So, if you are able to get health coverage through your employer (which is how most of middle class America manages it), and you’re already paying through the nose for coverage that shrinks every year, McCain wants to make the cost prohibitive even to you.   According to saukvalley.com, “…a worker whose employer-offered family plan now costs an average $12,000 a year, that would mean a tax increase of $3,360, if in the 28 percent bracket.” 

Lee Burman at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center also suggests that some employers might drop workers’ healthcare coverage altogether should the government offer that tax credits for private insurance, as proposed by McCain.

Healthcare in this country is in a poor enough state.  It’s bad enough I can’t get reimbursed for my son’s speech therapy – even when it’s covered in my contract documents – but now Senator McCain want to see to it not only that certain folks are never covered, but that those who are pay more for fewer privileges and cannot seek redress should the insurance company fail to live up to its end of the severely constricted bargain.

We certainly don’t need McCain’s “help” with making it more expensive for the average consumer to receive less coverage.  We get enough help from the insurance companies as it is.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) made a tactical error when he suggested during an interview on Friday that Senator Clinton should bow out of the presidential race now.  In a later statement Senator Obama allowed that Clinton “can” stay in the race as long as she likes.  Neither Leahy’s statements, nor the follow up by Obama, have done Obama any favors with women of a certain age.

The statements have resonated with many women in a fashion counter-productive both to the theme of unity and to actually winning the general election.  Many women are using the word we're not supposed to use, "sexism."  Over on the blogs people are asking why the comments were sexist, “because a man said them?” asked more than one commenter.  In a word, yes.

It’s a matter of perspective, you see.  Some statements, when coming from men rather than women, reek of the legacy of patriarchy.  Women are as attuned to this as minorities are to the stench of racism.  The allowance that the little lady “can” stay in the race of she wants only compounded the error.  It’s patronizing.  It suggests Clinton somehow needs permission from party leaders to do what any other candidate in a close race would not only be entitled, but expected to do without requiring permission from anyone  – namely, head for the finish line and see who actually wins.

If the situation were reversed, with Clinton in Obama’s shoes and Obama in Clinton’s, then calls for Obama’s concession would be both equally premature and equally perceived as patronizing among those who expect no different from the old-boy establishment.

A further survey of comments on various news articles regarding the subject turn up such gems as “waste your vote on a lil’ woman,”  “a candidate whose idea of foreign policy is donning an apron and baking a batch of brownies,” and “The enemy was within...clothed in familiar suits (and pant suits).”  There have been, in fact, multiple mentions of “pant suits” over the course of the race, as if the suits that men wear do not somehow involve pants.

And then there are Clinton's knees and her neck, both showing signs that she's not a girl of twenty competing for the cover of Sports Illustrated.  There are comments regarding her failure to "keep her house in order," her "whining," her crying, all typical disparagements against females - uppity ones in particular.  There was "pimping" and the implication that Clinton's entire career rested upon the laurels of a scorned woman - as if she had no other qualifications, brought no mind or substance or anything of value to the table.  There was Limbaugh's grossly offensive, if somewhat oblique, comparison of a Clinton/Obama ticket to a sexual position.   There was "beat the bitch" and that rightwing political group whose name was designed to form an acronym of "the c-word."   Hillary is "castrating;" she is "emasculating."  Say what you will about the particular point on the spectrum, Leahy's comments play into a pattern of sexism that has been both blatant and subtle, from both right-wing and left: universal, and abiding, and infuriating.

Combine this with the equally patronizing “you’re likable enough, Hillary,” signs which suggest Clinton should “iron my shirts,” and the media’s insistence on charged language, and women who grew up living the less-than-equal treatment that same media now tells us is a bygone era cannot help but notice a pattern of inveterate sexism when it comes to depictions of and dealings with the Senator from New York.

If Clinton’s supporters made egregious comments mentioning fields and cotton, they would be castigated as racists, and rightly so.  Yet women are being told, once again, to ignore the current of sexism running throughout this primary season.  We’re being told, once again, that it’s really all in our heads.  We’re being told, for the umpteenth million time in our lives, not to worry our pretty little heads over such complicated matters as what we have a right to perceive as insulting.

Being a woman in this country often provides a vastly different experience from being a man, just as being white generally means a vastly different experience than being black.  Neither situation is fair, neither is justified, but both are just as real and as common as cornflakes. 

Much as entrenched racism has code words and phrases, so, too, does sexism, and women of a certain age know sexism when we hear it, much as men do.  The difference is that our hearing has been finely tuned through decades of living on the wrong side of the equation. 

So, rather than demoralizing Clinton’s women’s base with a “statement of the obvious,” the comments reminded many of the years we have struggled to be taken seriously in the public sphere, and of the sexism that still pervades modern day life, let alone politics.  Somehow I doubt that’s the result Leahy  - or Obama - intended.

You know, I've been entirely consumed with my own life for the last year or so.  My older son has dyslexia, my husband and I both have insurance companies that refuse to cover his therapy - though said therapy is supposed to be covered,  older son's teacher is worse than useless (and has generated so many complaints - outside of my own - that her contract is not being renewed), manufacturing (the industry in which I work) has taken a significant downturn, my dad had a heart attack, my mom with osteoporosis broke her leg, I sprained an ankle so badly it may never heal correctly, apparently I have carpal tunnel.  You get the picture.  It's been a spectacularly bad year for Chez Kiosan, and I've only begun to scratch the surface.

About six months or so ago, though, I was looking forward to at least being able to vote wholeheartedly Democratic, regardless of the nominee, in the next presidential election.  I am exceedingly sad to say I don't have the luxury of that illusion anymore.

I wanted very much to be able to vote my conscience with a major candidate.  While I readily admit to preferring Clinton at the outset, I was fully prepared to vote as enthusiastically for Biden, Dodd, Richardson or Obama should any of them secure the nomination.  That was before, however, my friends to left of me - and indeed, Senator Obama himself, insisted I was either stupid, a closet racist, or both, for not supporting him from the outset.

I cannot in good conscience vote for McCain, so I started trying to invent excuses - these were the opinions of his more rabid supporters, not the opinions of the Senator from Illinois himself, I theorized.  However, I signed up for his campaign emails - woe unto me.  I finally had to write a note to Mr. Plouffe - or, more accurately, whatever low-level staffer reads the campaign's emails (yes, I know, Hillary likely employs the same) - begging that the official campaign emails leave off making Clinton, a fellow Democrat, out to be the devil incarnate.  I must say I signed on for Hillary's emails early, and I cannot recall a one that called out Senator Obama as anything less than a human opponent; most didn't even mention him.

Super Tuesday came and went, and the pro-Obama faction on the net became both more virulent and more offensive.  Clinton supporters were morphed from normal, average, centrist Democrats into baby-eating, do-anything-to-win, idiotic, self-deluded, baby-eating (noted twice because it is a favorite meme and because it is well known that eating babies causes terrible indigestion), racist, NASCAR-loving, uncultured, baby-eating (acid reflux) heathens who couldn't be counted upon to vote with any conscience, let alone one they called their own.

I have given up Kos and HuffPo and even the comments on WaPo, as subsumed as they are by partisans so proud of their own penises that cannot even imagine anyone finding satisfaction elsewhere.  I have given up most of the blogs I used to enjoy because so many of the friends to my left have abandoned all good sense in favor of a leftist cult of personality which not only rivals that of Bush II, but completely overwhelms it.  I have given up completely on the idea of a fair and balanced media presence of any sort, when even my evolution and global warming-denying parents note that it might be an outside possibility that the news media haven't really been treating candidate Clinton entirely fairly - maybe - but that pimping comment and the stuff about her knees is fair game.

I began, I admit, preferring Senator Clinton to any other Democratic candidate, but I also began willing to vote for whomever the process settled upon.  Senator Obama and his supporters have, however, relieved me of that particular burden.  I intend to vote my conscience, and it calls for neither Senator McCain (whose typical Republican yes-I-lcheated-on-my-wife-but-at-least-married-my-mistress (unlike Bill) and 100 years' war I cannot stomach), nor Senator Obama (whose ties to the Chicago machine, whose woeful lack of record, whose inability to deal with his own committee assignments, and whose intentional divisiveness I cannot stomach), and Nader is a goof. 

I am currently formulating my write in vote.  I'm not sure who it will be yet, but it won't be McCain or Obama.

And let me preempt the "well, we don't need you" tripe I've seen from the rabid Obamists - yes, as a matter of fact, you do.  You need people who care about the process and who can be relied upon to vote.  You need people who don't like Bush but who still can't be bought in mere "I'm not Bush" coin.  Obama's most viable claim to the coronation nomination is that he can bring independents into the fold.  I'm here to tell you that independents who've paid any real attention to him are frequently turned off.  I have voted Dem in all but 2-3 races, I believe in the sanctity of privacy, that all people were created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  I believe the greatest of us owe to the least of us at least a bare minimum of supprt, if only to support the society upon which we all agree.  I believe healthcare should be a right and not a priviledge; I believe the tax system is completely out of whack; I believe watching out only for your own pocketbook robs you of a certain basic humanity.

And for all I'm undeclared, this insistence that I'm either an idiot, a racist, nor both has me guessing that since *I'm* not feeling terribly united there are many who feel less magnanimous than I who feel even less "united" by one of the most fundamentally divisive candidates I've been alive to witness.

Of course, it is entirely possible that Senator Obama and his supporters will prove me wrong in the general election.  I'll grant that it is likely that Obama will take the primary with more pledged delegates, more superdelegates and higher popular count (not necessarily including Florida and Michigan, which would merit an entirely separate series of posts).  It is possible that, inspite of the constant, unrelenting name-calling, core Dems will come out for Obama no matter how much he vilifies party centrists and their supporters.  It is possible that alienating lifelong Democratic voters who have felt allegiance to policy and platform over rhetoric and rancor won't matter.  It is possible that Carly Simon will record a top 40 hit this year. 

Remote, but possible. 

Um, psst.  Wanna know where the title of this comes from?  Go here.