some days you can't win for losing

I often wonder if it is at all possible to lower the political discourse in North America from its current bottom feeder level... so far it’s like looking into an endless abyss. This morning the papers are all going a-gad screaming about the cost of US GOP VP nomination wardrobe costs. The Toronto Star:

CHARLOTTE, N.C.–Dressing up the self-styled hockey mom cost the Republican National Committee more than $150,000.

Small potatoes in a big election, Republican officials said, after trips to Saks Fifth Avenue in New York and St. Louis and Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis for Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin were uncovered by the U.S. political website politico.com.

Well, maybe it’s because the GOP didn’t want a repeat of this criticism – taken from the Washington Post:

(Photo - Herbert Knosowski -- AP)

At yesterday's gathering of world leaders in southern Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the United States was represented by Vice President Cheney. The ceremony at the Nazi death camp was outdoors, so those in attendance, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, were wearing dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots. Because it was cold and snowing, they were also wearing gentlemen's hats. In short, they were dressed for the inclement weather as well as the sobriety and dignity of the event. The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.

Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children's clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.

Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one's country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words "Staff 2001." It was the kind of hat a conventioneer might find in a goodie bag.

It is also worth mentioning that Cheney was wearing hiking boots -- thick, brown, lace-up ones. Did he think he was going to have to hike the 44 miles from Krakow -- where he had made remarks earlier in the day -- to Auschwitz?

(…)There is little doubt that intellectually Cheney approached the Auschwitz ceremony with thoughtfulness and respect. But symbolism is powerful. That's why the piercing cry of a train whistle marked the beginning of the ceremony and the glare of searchlights signaled its end. The vice president might have been warm in his parka, ski cap and hiking boots. But they had the unfortunate effect of suggesting that he was more concerned with his own comfort than the reason for braving the cold at all.

Let us not lose sight of the fact Palin’s new wardrobe did not come from the public purse and I have seen Palin in an old parka, but how Vice-Presidental will she look campaigning in it?

How much is Karl Rove paying this man?

'Cause whatever it is, it is not enough, he deserves a raise.

Sarah Palin, I know her well, for she is a sister of mine.

Not by blood but by sex, gender, geography and generation. I am two years older than Sarah Palin, but I understand well how the times and culture played a role in shaping her. I know and understand small town life in harsh landscapes. I might have been Sarah Palin if I had a husband who lived beyond a ten year mark or I had not chosen to leave small towns behind in pursuit of an elusive dream. And yes, I have eaten mooseburgers and walked behind my grandfather on his trapline.

I know Gloria Steinem, she too is a sister of mine. An older sister, and one who dedicated her life to fight on the behalf of younger sisters like me, Sarah Palin and The Last Amazon. In fact, without Gloria Steinem leading the charge and manning the barricades of women’s rights; where would my beloved daughter be now? I shudder to think of her potential left to wither and grow cold, but today, because of the Gloria Steinems, and the Germaine Greers and countless other women, my newly turned 17 year old daughter begins her first day of official day of classes in a honours bachelors program in neuroscience.

Unlike myself, my daughter did not have anyone telling her that her sex and gender defined the whole scope of her life’s choices. She played Risk and Battleship and no one excluded her from the game for being female. She played hockey and no one told her – no girls allowed. She joined the Royal Canadian Cadet Corps of the 48th Highlanders and has been publicly rewarded and recognized for her shooting skills, and she a city girl for all of that. She was also free to spend her paycheque at Sephora - or not. The feminist movement I grew up under preached choices for women and equality of opportunity not to be defined or based on one’s sex/gender, and for a time, I believed every word my older sisters spoke.

Yesterday, I read a column penned by my estranged sister Gloria:

This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton.

And it reminded me why I no longer call or self-identify myself as a feminist. You see, I believed in my youth and naivety that feminism was all about women asserting their rights as individuals without the traditional cultural constricts of sex and/or gender. In short, women have the same individual right to the pursuit of happiness of any man. One’s right to choose does not trump or supersede another’s sex and gender.

Implicit in that belief of emancipation for women was the right to choose to be a working wife and mother, or a stay in the home wife and mother, or even the right to chose to be neither a wife nor mother. I mistakenly believed being Pro-Choice should have been also included the right for a woman to freely chose to be Pro-Life as well. Woe is me, I learned by living that feminism as practiced by the old guard gate-keepers had very little room for free choice - if one is female and chooses orthodoxy or tradition. Mine and Sarah’s bad.

Don’t misunderstand me, I do not take offense at Sister Gloria for speaking out against Sarah Palin’s political beliefs for that is an individual choice and decision. What offends me is Sister Gloria’s assertion Sarah Palin opposes everything most other women want and need. Really? How so? In fact, I would assert Sarah Palin might possibly live a life which more closely mirrors most of how the sisterhood chooses either to live or aspires to live than the life Sister Gloria has chosen for herself - if the experience of my own eyes is anything to go by. What disgusts me, is Sister Gloria asserting Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. So are we now to be counted male, female and lesser female being?

The colour of her lipstick.

Most of the political pundits (both American and Canadian) I have read since John McCain’ announced his pick for VP haven’t come close to getting Sarah Palin but Janet Daley of the British Telegraph gets close:

Do I respect the decision of another mother and daughter to make that choice based on their own values? Yes, I do. And that - as far as I am concerned - is what it means to be a "liberal". Which brings us to the subject of those hokey old redneck values that the Guardian and the blogosphere find so amusing (or pernicious, depending on their degree of dedication).

I personally am, and always have been, fervently pro-choice on abortion. I do not consider this to be the only sanctified Woman's point of view because I am aware that huge numbers of women disagree with me.

Whenever I touch on the subject, they write in and tell me so, often in eloquent and passionate terms. But according to the official feminist sisterhood (which was taken over by the totalitarian Marxist tendency long ago) you can represent the views of Women only if you accept the tenets of their ideology. Ergo, Mrs Palin is not a Woman Candidate.

She is a renegade, the gender equivalent of an Uncle Tom. In the US, her position is particularly incendiary because it is part of the culture war between metropolitan liberals and provincial America: that vast fly-over country where people (or "folks", as they call themselves) still live by the standards the Palin family embodies. Life is about hard work and hard play.

They hunt with guns from childhood. They talk about sin (and redemption) in ways that embarrass the urban elite, and they regard patriotism as a fundamental part of their moral code. (It is the liberals' ambivalence about patriotism that they detest most.)

Like Margaret Thatcher before her, Mrs Palin is coming in for both barrels of Left-wing contempt: misogyny and snobbery. Where Lady Thatcher was dismissed as a "grocer's daughter" by people who called themselves egalitarian, Mrs Palin is regarded as a small-town nobody by those who claim to represent "ordinary people".

What the metropolitan sophisticates failed to understand in the 1980s when Thatcher won election after election is even more the case in the US: most (and I do mean most) ordinary people actually believe in the basic decencies, the "small-town values", of family, marital fidelity, and personal responsibility. They believe in and honour them - even if they do not manage to uphold them.

Middle America - of which Alaska is spiritually, if not geographically, a part - builds its life around those ideals and regards commonplace moral lapses as part of the eternal struggle to be good. The life of small-town USA is based on the principles of those Protestant colonial settlers who founded the nation: hard work, self-improvement, personal faith and family devotion. Mrs Palin speaks to and for them in a way that patronising "liberal" elitists find infuriating.

Best line of Palin's speech last night has got to be, "The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery."

I have read Palin's bio, I have watched the bloodbath of coverage in the Liberal media, I have listened to her speeches, and all I want to know now is; what is name and colour of Palin’s lipstick?

Can we all agree Genocide is a bad thing?

Let us all agree with this post and take it one step further and blame the Virgin Mary. If she had only kept her legs closed when the Holy Ghost came calling - stop and think for a moment - how many millions of Jews would have been spared from two millenniums worth of pogroms?

How low will progressives go?

The question in my mind becomes just how low are progressive bottom-feeders prepared to go in this election cycle?

Sarah Palin Is NOT The Mother

For the record, I have had three pregnancies with birthing times running from 34 hours for the first child, 20 hours for the second child, and the third only finished after 44 hours. Oh, did I mention I had a grandmother who gave birth at 50 years of age to her last child and men were still trying to pick-up during her last month of pregnancy?

Obomination of Identity Politics

I have been doing my best to avoid politics on both sides of the 49th parallel but it has not been easy, and I was sure sucked in last night. I made the mistake of turning on the television in my bedroom and discovered to my horror CNN is the default channel – or I should say ObamaN was the default channel. I did manage to catch Hillary's much ado about nothing concession speech. I must say, when she is on her game, she is good – as in damn good. Too bad, she is set to lose. It is even more of a shame she is set to lose based on race trumping sex rather than the content of her ideas.

There is not much I would agree with Wet Willie over, but he pegged it quite rightly about his wife receiving a raw deal in the national media. Talk about being bushwaked, and if you want to know the real reason there are not more women in politics; just take a long hard look at the media coverage a Hillary or a Couillard receive for your answer.

I make no apologizes for preferring a Hillary presidency over Obama. I do not particularly like Hillary Clinton's politics but in this race, I take character and content over 'change' any day. Hillary has no lack of character and a spine of steel. Americans could weather a potential Hillary presidency without too much damage and our relations with our neighbors and trading partners would not take a direct hit. The same cannot be said for an Obama presidency.

Americans need to ask themselves if they really need to be tortured with a replay of Jimmy Carter's presidency all over again – and the Americans are still literally paying for that one. Although, I do admit there is a wide streak of perversity to my nature. I would positively revel in an Obomination of a presidency just so I can feel vindicated and gloat… as I do do good gloat.

The big question becomes will the Obomination offer Hillary the VP slot on the ticket?

On the one hand, Hillary does come with high negatives and really hurts the whole 'change' narrative but a cursory glance at the alleged frontrunners for the slot and Hillary seems positively fresh and dynamitic in comparison. He could offer it as a concession to the politics of compromise and reconciliation. Besides, he needs to throws some crumbs to entice the democratic feminist base to stay or risk alienating them into staying home or crossing over to McCain in November.

I admit I will enjoy watching him being forced to say nice things about Hillary knowing he does not mean a word to it. Actually, I enjoy watching anyone being forced to say nice things about Hillary and not meaning a word of it. There is also the added perk of watching Michelle and Hillary clash over Whitehouse turf – talk about the clash of the Titans. Michelle may have the angry black woman spiel down pat but Hillary is the original mud slinger with friends hidden in corners all over Washington.

If anything, I am more convinced today than ever that the 2008 Presidential race is McCain's race to lose. Democrats and republican voters are pretty much an evenly split voting pool. For one ticket to prevail over another requires one ticket to either alienate their base into staying home or culling votes from the other side.

Obama has no pull factor with Republicans. As in nada, no and less than none. McCain may not be the poster child of the Republican ticket and republicans may grumble he is not Reagan but then again - who is? And unless 4 years in perdition look damn good - the base will rally around McCain barring any serious missteps he might make in the race.

A lot will depend on just who McCain picks as a running mate on the VP slot. The top four favourites seemed to be failed republican primary nominee Mitt Romney, Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, Governor Bobby Jindal of Lousianna and Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Mitt Romney would potentially shore up McCain's tattered conservative credentials and help address a key weakness on economic policy but Romney comes with very high negatives among both conservative and liberal voters. Nor does Romney have any pull factor among Democratic voters – more like repell than pull. McCain's a smart guy so I cannot see him falling into the Romney trap. Charlies Crist is a popular governor with a solid record and he can obviously deliver Florida – a swing state, but Florida is McCain's too lose anyway. Besides nothing says old and in need of a change more than the aesthetics of two old white haired men standing side by side on the ticket in the identity politics race of 2008.

All of which brings me to my two new favourite conservative Republicans. Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin. I cannot decide who I love better as a republican running mate for John McCain. I think it depends on who Obama picks. If he plays the Hillary card for VP, McCain should go for Jindal and unleash Desi power which would be totally awesome. If Obama picks a male than McCain should go for Palin and the aesthetics alone could carry the card. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Palin is still drop-dead gorgeous, with the highest approval rating of any current sitting governor, a record as a solid fiscal conservative with strong family values, NRA member and real hunter.