I’ve seen a number of critiques of the Beck-Palin phenomenon lately that attribute The Rise of the Silver Slurpers to a simple longing for leadership in these tumultuous times. There was this NYT op-ed over the weekend by Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister, lefty feminists pining for “A Palin of Our Own.”
Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics.
The left’s failure to nurture and celebrate female politicians has had a significant effect on its policies. In recent years, Democratic majorities and progressive legislation seem to have been built on steady trade-offs of reproductive rights, culminating this year when the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to push through health care reform with a compromise on abortion financing.
An older generation of female Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Pelosi, are about as eager to mount a Palin-style girl-powered campaign as they are to wear a miniskirt on the House floor. For them, proudly or aggressively touting one’s feminist credentials (if you’re actually a feminist, that is) is taboo. It’s considered too, well, female.
I call bullshit on this. First of all, let’s look at the examples they cited: Clinton, Pelosi and Palin. Hillary Clinton is arguably the most powerful woman on the planet, busily running the foreign policy apparatus of the world’s only super power. Nancy Pelosi is the only female Speaker of the House—ever—and a highly effective legislator in that role by any objective measure. And Sarah Palin is…an occasional Fox News contributor, a former second-fiddle on a losing presidential ticket and a half-term governor who quit every important job she ever held.
Sorry, ladies, but I’ll match our record up with the GOP’s on women’s leadership any day of the week. Sure, Palin has a creepily devoted fan base and scads of Facebook friends. So does Lady Gaga. And Lady Gaga has more progressive policy chops.
Since tomorrow is probably going to be wall-to-wall blogging about Glenn Beck’s Rubestock Festival in DC, I decided to skip Joe Biden’s convention speech and fast-forward to that fleeting Golden Hour of Wediditude that divided the Waning Light of the Bush Era from the Suffocating Nightfall of Palinism…if only for half a news-cycle.
I think Tbogg is onto something here. Citing Palin’s hand-picked protégé Joe Miller’s relentless pimping of his rugged outdoorsy-ness, moose-bloodlust, etc., Tbogg says:
We get it. You’re an outdoorsman and you’re all macho and shit with your manscaped beard, but, seriously, after the last couple of years of listening to that babbling snowbilly grifter natter on about your Alabama-with-a-snowpack hellstate, we’re kinda of Alaska’d out about the Great White North and we wish you guys would just take our tax dollars and shut the fuck up about your bullshit last frontier self-sufficiency.
Yep. And yet, I pity the Alaskans not named Joe W. Miller and Sarah Palin, for they are being stereotyped by the Snowflake Snooki Moose-Killin’, Salmon-Slayin’ Minstrel Show.
I know what it’s like to have your state thrust onto the national political stage because of the antics of a handful of dumbasses. No one who lived in Florida during the 2000 election recount will ever forget the shame of “Floriduh”—the officials staring at hanging chads in slack-jawed amazement, the Condo Commandos accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan, etc.
And it wasn’t just a campaign gimmick, since he planned to use the truck to tow a boat at his lakeside New Hampshire vacation home, baby, because that’s what regular guys who own boats and vacation homes in New Hampshire do with their eight-year-old pickups when they’re not driving their John Deere tractors to the opera, or cruising around East Hampton in a Bobcat front-loader.
Also, he insisted that everyone at the fundraiser call him “Big Willard,” ate his dinner with a Schrade Nitro MAGIC Spring Assist Tanto Knife and refused to pose for photos with donors unless they agreed to roshambo him for his autograph.
Is it possible that neo-con cheerleader and deficit hysteric Charles Krauthammer sees the last 18 months more clearly than some of our sky-is-falling manic-progressives? While Chicken Littles on the left are ready to dismiss Obama as an abject failure / corporate sell-out / reincarnation of George W. Bush, Krauthammer surveys the political landscape and warns fellow Republicans not to count the Kenyan Usurper out:
Consider what he has already achieved. Obamacare alone makes his presidency historic. It has irrevocably changed one-sixth of the economy, put the country inexorably on the road to national health care and, as acknowledged by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus but few others, begun one of the most massive wealth redistributions in U.S. history.
Second, there is major financial reform, which passed Congress on Thursday. Economists argue whether it will prevent meltdowns and bailouts as promised. But there is no argument that it will give the government unprecedented power in the financial marketplace. Its 2,300 pages will create at least 243 new regulations that will affect not only, as many assume, the big banks but just about everyone, including, as noted in one summary (the Wall Street Journal), “storefront check cashiers, city governments, small manufacturers, home buyers and credit bureaus.”
Third is the near $1 trillion stimulus, the largest spending bill in U.S. history. And that’s not even counting nationalizing the student loan program, regulating carbon emissions by Environmental Protection Agency fiat, and still-fitful attempts to pass cap-and-trade through Congress.
[snip]
The net effect of 18 months of Obamaism will be to undo much of Reaganism. Both presidencies were highly ideological, grandly ambitious and often underappreciated by their own side. In his early years, Reagan was bitterly attacked from his right. (Typical Washington Post headline: “For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over”—and that was six months into his presidency!) Obama is attacked from his left for insufficient zeal on gay rights, immigration reform, closing Guantanamo—the list is long. The critics don’t understand the big picture.
Of course, Krauthammer views all of this as a BAD thing. And he assumes Obama is indifferent to the fate of the Congressional Dems because he’s marshalling his political energy for a fresh assault on mom, apple pie and freedom in a second presidential term.
I think Krauthammer’s wrong about that, but he got the Reagan-scale transformational presidency stuff about right, and it’s exactly what Obama said he hoped to do in widely misunderstood remarks he made during the 2008 primary.
Meanwhile, it’s entirely possible the GOP is setting itself up for a gigantic disappointment this fall. They will surely gain seats in Congress, but with all the premature triumphalism on the right, the handwringing on the left and continuous media drumbeat about the coming November bloodbath, the GOP must now at least retake the House just to meet expectations. And that’s a tall order.
Maybe they’ll pull it off. But if they don’t, I think we’ll see Chicken Littles hatching all over the right, and they’ll direct their beady little eyes at the teabaggers.
The Democrats will gain seats in the mid-term elections. Well, it’s possible if RNC Chairman Michael Steele will be leading the GOP effort in November. He’s said some astonishingly stupid shit during his tenure, but this takes the prize:
“The McChrystal incident, to me, was very comical. And I think it’s a reflection of the frustration that a lot of our military leaders have with this Administration and their prosecution of the war in Afghanistan,” said Steele. “Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.”
“It was one of those, one of those areas of the total board of foreign policy [“in the Middle East”?—Note: The audio is not quite clear in this section.] that we would be in the background, sort of shaping the changes that were necessary in Afghanistan as opposed to directly engaging troops,” Steele continued. “But it was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan.”
It’s legitimate to debate whether or not the US should have invaded Afghanistan—in 2001—or whether it made sense to double down with a troop surge in 2010. But it’s flat-out delusional to pretend there wasn’t already a war there before Obama was even elected to the Senate. Just ask the dead soldiers and civilians. Oops—you can’t! They died. In a war.
Michael Steele is either an abysmally stupid man, a bald-faced liar or a raving nutbag. Or perhaps all three.
UPDATE:
Well, despite what our lying eyes might tell us, Steele is right to say Obama started the Afghanistan war. Bill Kristol, who is never, ever right about anything, ever, calls bullshit on Steele. So Steele must be right.
Remember what happened last time Joe the Plumber tried to do comedy? THIS happened:
Lesson not learned, Mr. Plumber is making another foray into painfully bad wingnut humor. He’s the new pitchman for a horrid comic strip called “Microman,” which appears to be aimed at the elderly, Gold Bond-dusted teabagger demographic.
Mr. Plumber and the strip’s creator, Robert Stern, plan to hawk the wingnut comic book at teabagger events in Vegas. From the press release:
This toast to the Tea Party movement and American freedom stars Microman, the new hero of the conservative right. Microman loves liberty and loves his life. He just doesn’t like the notion of paying taxes on his hard-earned money and watching his country turn socialist.
Presented in a series of original comic strips, Microman’s humorous musings on education, fiscal policy, foreign affairs, healthcare, and more will make readers laugh and feel good about fighting for the principles our Founding Fathers set forth.
How horrible is “Microman”? So horrible it makes “Family Circus” seem like avant-garde comedic genius. See just HOW horrible it is after the jump…
Will someone please stage an intervention with Mittens before he dumps tens of millions more devalued dollars into a doomed quest for the 2012 GOP nomination? The Five Sons of Mitt are the most obvious candidates for the task. The Romneys are loaded, but they are multiplying like bunnies and will eventually need every cent to keep the MiniMitts in MittMansions and Guatemalan gardeners.
Mitt’s definitely running, though, else why would he churn out hilarious shit like this?
The first rule of turnarounds is to focus time, energy and resources on what matters most. The president simply cannot treat this crisis like another of his many problems. The oil disaster could hurt millions of families, slam the regional economy, kill untold numbers of non-human lives and irreparably damage the planet. Among other things, he must not hold more rock concerts at the White House — I understand James Carville’s venting: His hero fiddled as oil churned.
That last sentence is a rather obvious lie—nobody really understands anything crazed-fetus-look-a-like Carville says, least of all Mitt, who is also too dumb to realize that Obama is hardly Carville’s hero. But no more rock concerts—great point.
When we last left our embittered incognito PUMA and “voice for all women” poseur Amy Siskind of The New Agenda, she was casting about for a term to replace “feminism,” having judged that word passé since most women who apply it to themselves recognize Siskind’s hero Palin for the fraudulent nincompoop she is.
Siskind has now settled on “pro-women” as the replacement word. And in her latest HuffPo column, she praises the leadership of The New Feminism Pro-Women-ism:
But the most exciting aspect of the new pro-women movement is women support women. Sarah Palin is setting the pace by not only recruiting and endorsing, but also to standing by women political leaders. And conservative women in the media like Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham are continually defending their women leaders.
Yeah, well, call me when ONE of them defends a non-wingnut woman, and then we can talk about how much their support is based on gender solidarity. Palin routinely endorses GOP men over GOP women—just ask Kay Bailey Hutchison and Lisa Murkowski. And the frothing wingnuts Siskind describes as “conservative women in the media” viciouslyattack any woman who isn’t a fellow frothing wingnut—often in sexist terms (or, in Palin’s case, stand by giggling while men do it).
Siskind concludes:
As I consider “feminism” and “pro-women,” here’s my visceral reaction: Feminism feels like a trip back to junior high school full of mean girls—ganging up and cliques that exclude. I barely made it out alive the first time and I’m not eager to go back. Pro-women feels mature and positive. It makes me (a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, registered Democrat) feel not only welcome, but also supported, empowered and excited.
And there you have it—it’s all about how it makes Siskind feel. It’s nice that she feels all empowerfulled by Palin’s shtick. But the thing is, our own personal feelings aren’t the primary concern here. Real issues are: the freedom to make our own choices and a desire to see full equality not only for women but also for our gay brothers and sisters.
There’s a reason pro-choice women and gay-rights supporters are overwhelmingly Democrats: The Democrats aren’t perfect, but they’re the only party that even pretends to give a damn about reproductive freedom and gay rights. If Siskind gave a shit about anything besides her own extra-delicate personal fee-wings, she’d get that. But she doesn’t. So she doesn’t.
In a judicial smackdown reminiscent of the Orly Taitz saga, the investigating officer in the court martial of Birther Army doctor Terrence Lakin has denied Lakin’s request to compel President Obama to testify, robbing the Birthers of what they hoped would be a golden opportunity to try the “eligibility” question in a high-stakes trial setting.
Anyhoo, apologies for the poor quality of the artwork. Truly gifted artist and official Rumproast Orly Taitz portraitist Mrs. Polly is presumably occupied with Roastacon festivities, so the task of illustrating a bit of breaking birther news fell into my incompetent hands. (Kinda like walking into the Sistine Chapel and finding Michelangelo’s work painted over by Thomas Kinkade, isn’t it?)
...but, c’mon, it’s pretty funny that Bill Clinton was the one asking Joe Sestak to drop out. The only thing that would have been better was if they waited until the 31st (hint, hint) to release the info.
According to Lanny Davis, Rand Paul is a misunderstood Mr. Smith (like the one who “Goes to Washington”). And if we know what’s good for us, we’ll realize it’s just plain wrong to enjoy Rachel Maddow’s masterful takedown of Paul and the teabagger wunderkind’s subsequent national media flailing.
Know why? Because after initially enjoying Paul’s media roasting himself, Lanny Davis discovered that Paul is a sincere, principled man who is just echoing the Libertarian Party platform (even though he’s running as a Republican). How does Lanny Davis know this? Because he looked it up! On the Libertarian Party website!
…Maddow’s co-hosts at MSNBC, and Maddow herself, seemed to relish playing and replaying Paul’s humiliation just a little too much.
That’s when I decided to read the Libertarian Platform… I wanted to understand better why Rand Paul was taking what seemed to be such a politically suicidal set of positions. It explained a lot ... including about why my and my fellow liberals’ sanctimony about Mr. Paul might have been somewhat misplaced.
Under its “Statement of Principles,” the Platform states: “Since governments, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, we oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals.” Under “Property and Contract,” the platform states that “property rights are entitled to the same protection as all other human rights. The owners of property have the full right to control, use, dispose of, or in any manner enjoy, their property without interference…”
So there it is: If you believe in that principle, you wouldn’t agree with government compelling a private restaurant owner to serve anyone he or she doesn’t want to, regardless of the reasons.
Get. The. Fuck. Out! Well, that totally excuses Paul from answering to any consequences that might flow from enacting legislation in line with that principle! Why didn’t you say so, Mr. Paul?
Campaign manager Shiree Verdone is moving to a 2010 “Republican Victory” fundraising operation. Mike Hellon, a former Arizona Republican Party chairman who had a part-time role as deputy campaign manager, will join her there.
Neither Verdone nor Hellon was fired, said Brian Rogers, McCain’s campaign spokesman, who confirmed the staff changes Friday in a statement to The Arizona Republic.
Joe Lieberman thinks it would be a good idea for anyone suspected of being involved with a terrorist group to be stripped of their citizenship. The Department of State would be prosecutor, judge and jury in this decision. And he’s holding a presser tomorrow morning to introduce the proposed legislation. Constitution be damned! There’s terrorists lurking amongst us and we must do what it takes to avoid reading them their Miranda rights! Because, yes, that seems to be what this is all about.
Greg originally reported that Sen. Charles Schumer was leaning towards supporting this McCarthy inspired *legislation* but now reports that he was misinformed. So at least there’s that.
Let’s hope this will just go down as another grandstanding idiotic idea that does nothing but provide Lieberdouche with some prime time sound bites. It’s just hard to see how proposing to strip us of freedoms is somehow intended to protect our freedoms. But then it’s hard to see how some people walk and chew gum at the same time.
