Congratulations to Senator Obama on his historic nomination. (What, you didn’t think I’d be that gracious? I may be a PUMA, but my momma taught me decent manners.)

I still have many misgivings about Sen. Obama as a candidate. I have many more misgivings about how my party treated me, and allowed others to treat me, during this campaign season. Many PUMAs will not vote for Sen. Obama, given the way so many women were belittled, dismissed, hated and threatened during the primaries. Women who have toiled long in the trenches for Democratic candidates from dogcatcher to president. Women like me who have lived through a campaign or three, as well as lots of real life, and aren’t easily swayed by the New Shiny. I might have been more willing to ride the unity pony immediately post-nomination had I not heard through the magnificent Heidi Li about the strong-arm tactics used to collect the delegate “votes”. What will I do come November? Not sure yet.

But many other PUMAs and allies are more open to voting Democratic again. Now that he is the Democratic nominee in reality, I’m going to kick in my two cents just in case any Obama fans who are smart enough not to gloat are watching. (Hint: Don’t gloat. Only amateurs gloat. Gloating alienates the voters you need in the fall. Restrain the most ungracious of you and show good sportsmanship. You need the good karma, electorally and otherwise.) If you want to know what might win those dismissed, disrespected Dems back, senator, and rebuild a more vibrant Democratic party, here are a few ideas:

1. Publicly apologize for the sexism that occurred on your watch–then fight it every day. Ever heard the expression, “the buck stops here”? Even if you didn’t do it, or all of it, enough vile misogyny was committed in your name that you should disown it and fight it publicly, vociferously, and consistently from now on. (Too bad you didn’t do it when it actually mattered, but hey, lately I feel like everybody should get another shot at redemption. More on why, later.)

2. Follow Heidi Li’s advice–dump Howard Dean, Donna Brazile and the other big leaders at the DNC, fast. They built up so much bad will that many lifelong Dem women will never come back to the fold. That post I made about dancing with them what brung you? If they’re poisoning your fruit punch, you are officially exempt from following that advice.

3. Do something dramatic, drastic and irrevocable to prove you’re on the side of working families in this country. I know your speeches say you are, but you’ve done enough sucking up to, oh, health insurers and telecoms, for example, that many of us are skeptical. Vote against them, or Blackwater, or the oil companies. Showy won’t work here; it’s gotta have guts, like crossing-the-Rubicon guts. If you’re as good as your supporters say you are, then you have it in you.

I’m big on redemption and second chances right now because there are several people in my life in crisis, all of whom could use a cosmic bonus round. One just got fired illegally. Another is holding up three generations of family while one of them fights a nasty case of cancer; I’m holding her up so she can hold them up. Yet another just had emergency surgery and needs assistance doing all kinds of things.

And that’s just this week.

I’m going to help the people in my life fight their fights. I have my own to fight, as well. If I’m wrong about Sen. Obama, and he turns out to be as good for the country as his supporters believe, well, a truly improved future for my country is a nice trade-off for a little wounded pride. But whether I’m wrong (I hope) or right (I fear) about Senator Obama, it’s clear that far too many pundits and power brokers in America consider women–especially women with life experience–worthy of contempt. If we want a taste of freedom from misogyny, we have to keep going.

IS BILL TRYING TO TELL US WE SHOULDN’T VOTE FOR OBAMA???

• Leave a comment... (168)

As we prepare for the coronation Democratic National Convention, it’s becoming painfully clear that lots of the Dem faithful are growing uneasy about the anointed one presumptive nominee. You can’t swing a dead cat over your head without hearing how worried Dem-leaning folks are that Obama’s not cleaning the floor with McCain in this of all years, the one in which a Democratic corpse should be 20 points ahead of any Republican.

I was chatting earlier this week with the delightful Sista Christian Louboutin when it finally hit us: the plain, boiled-down essence of why we distrust Obama. Despite all of our cute catch-phrases and sarcastic similes, the truth is we’ve seen him change his policies and positions whenever it benefits him to do so. There doesn’t appear to be any core belief holding up his positions, no anchor, no foundation. Like Gertrude Stein said about old Oakland, California, there’s no “there” there.

Think we’re kidding? Try these on for size:

He said he’d use public financing for his campaign when he didn’t have a lot of money. Then he reneged when he started raising tons of money privately.

He said he disapproved of offshore drilling, until supporting it helped him fight John McCain’s growing popularity on the issue.

He was a constitutional scholar, but voted for the FISA reauthorization act which gutted the 4th amendment and any shreds of privacy against government intrusion you had left, and giving AT&T, Verizon and the big telecoms immunity from lawsuits for spying on your every cell phone call, text and e-mail since the beginning of the Avignon presidency Bush II administration.

Obama said he represented a new, inspiring, transformational kind of politics free from the ugliness of the past. Then he used plenty of old-school Chicago dirty tricks to bully his way into winning the caucuses and blocking Clinton voters from primary polls, and he still pretended that he was above it all. (The people you’ll see on The Audacity of Democracy will make you cry about how this one.)

Now he’s proposing changes to the primary and caucus system, after he got everything he needed strong-arming the caucuses.

And, lest we forget, Obama said his candidacy represented hope and change. Well, he certainly didn’t break a sweat trying to change the virulent misogyny and sexism that were so acceptable as public discourse during this primary season. If he had, he might have given a glimmer of hope to millions of us who have been told to sit down, shut up and behave, rather than the valuable citizens, voters and experienced political trench workers we are.

Let me remind you, PUMAs: we ARE valuable. We ARE citizens. And we have the right and the moral obligation to call bullshit on the Democratic National Committee for enabling Obama in thinking he’s the second coming of JFK instead of the self-serving salesman we see. And if the powers that be won’t give us the respect we deserve, we’ll take it–and our 18 million votes with it.

• Leave a comment... (606)

So it seems that Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have reached an agreement to let her name be entered into a roll call during the convention. How sweet of the Illinois senator to allow the New York senator to exercise her right as a candidate, the same as all the male candidates before her have done. How thoughtful. How gracious. (Oh, never mind. That’s just gonna make me puke, and I ain’t in the mood.)

You may have noticed I just dropped an uncharacteristic ain’t in there. All these hush-hush, anonymously-sourced reports that Hil will pledge fealty turn her delegates over to Obama in exchange for this largesse are making me think of a political wit whose wisdom I miss terribly: Molly Ivins. In 1998, the tart Texan broad—and I use broad as the highest compliment—wrote You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You. She defended the Clintons from their overwrought, pathologically-warped enemies without letting Bill off the hook for his own mistakes. The title refers to the old Texan wisdom that it’s just not right to dump your date at a dance.

Well, the convention is the big dance. We PUMAs would be purring in our marabou mules to see Hillary take the nomination, and we know damn well that there’s only a sliver-wide superdelegate margin separating her from Obama. The outcome is not written in stone. Whatever “deal” was in the works, whatever backroom negotiations had to take place just to allow Hillary her right as a candidate, I have one thing to beg Hillary: Dance with them what brung you.

Your supporters, your delegates, your superdelegates, and the PUMAs have gone through hell and high water to stand up for you. We’ve fought accusations of racism and hatred and been called everything that you’ve been called. Some PUMAs faced threats to their safety (except without the benefit of Secret Service protection). Some supported you from the beginning of your candidacy; others, like me, warmed to you because of the grace and grit you demonstrated when you faced a level of hatred the other candidates in your field can never, ever imagine. We hung in there when your campaign stumbled and when you picked it back up. We hung in there when the mainstream media and the self-important pundits slapped you with every sexist, misogynistic label and image short of Photoshopping you in a miniskirt with sasquatch-hairy legs and a strap-on. Then we just said: NO DEAL! In doing so, we forced the media to acknowledge that we matter, our votes matter, and that even the oh-so-enlightened Democratic party shouldn’t be allowed to get away with telling us to sit down, shut up and be good, silent little girls. Don’t you dare hang up your dancing shoes before you dance, really dance, with the ones what brung you. You never know—you might just come home with the championship trophy.

• Leave a comment... (103)

These can be tough times for people like us who don’t understand that Obama is The Answer To Everything ™. I’ve got enough falling apart in my life to keep me entertained—the accusations that we PUMAs are somehow responsible for the real wounds of racism in America because we don’t worship at Barack’s altar are NOT helping.

The way the faithful put it, our criticisms of arrogance on the part of the candidate and his followers are proof of our racism. Now, I’m big on thoughtful soul-searching. I think we can all benefit from what the 12-steppers call taking inventory. So I raked as much of myself over the coals as I could to figure out if I was letting my privilege as a white person affect my feelings about the presumptuous nominee. (For more about the concept of privilege—of color, gender, class—check out this primer. I wish the Obama fans would; maybe they’d learn a little about sexism and misogyny.)

Just as I was beginning to worry that I was the reincarnation of a 1920s Klansman burning crosses across the Democratic party lawn, my guardian angels dropped a surprise on me—like the most amazing designer cocktail sandals in my perfect size, just when I need them, in the back of the bargain aisle with a 75% markdown tag. The ever-fabulous PUMA Heidi Li linked to this creeptastic call from an Obama supporter to the faithful to pray for us HRC supporters. In it, an Obot says, “We can’t wait for HRC to see the light on her own, we need to begin praying for her and her supporters now. Please commit to praying for them daily to 1) stop trying to hurt the Obama’s and the Democratic party. 2) Pray God will speak to them all and change their hearts so their only pursuit will be party unity and whole heartedly backing Sen. Obama.”

Excuse me??? Hey, Barack, you let this stay on your website. The buck stops with you, dude. You want people to stop calling you arrogant? Then you and your peeps need to stop treating people who disagree with you as poor, pathetic lost souls who need only see Your Light ™ to be saved. I was suddenly snapped back into my senses by the most condescending, offensive claptrap I’ve seen in a long time from anyone who isn’t Ann Coulter.

The faces of the other political figures I’ve thought arrogant came rushing into my mind. Richard Nixon. George W. Bush. Dick Cheney. Mitt Romney, to name a few (and if Mitt becomes McCain’s running mate, I’m moving to Canada , I find him so insufferable and unqualified). I don’t see a person of color among them. Maybe that 1920s Klansman is just a scary memory from a bad movie!

Obama-fans: Keep your prayers off’n my conscience. You know what my god says? Don’t bear false witness. As you treat the least of my children, so have you treated me. And most of all, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and leave to God that which is God’s. I’m not seeing a whole lot of those coming in my direction from your camp, lightseekers.

I’ve said this before: be very, very afraid of religious fervor surrounding political leaders. The vibe I get from the Obama faithful isn’t restored civic pride, or a pan-religious social movement like the 1960s civil rights movement. It’s a with-us-or-against-us, self-righteous club ready to intimidate, coerce, or pray us into conforming…or else. I don’t begrudge Obama the titanium ego anyone needs to run for president. I begrudge him for treating me like I’m a sinner in need of his salvation, instead of a voter whose respect he needs to earn.

• Leave a comment... (149)

So the Rock Star Messiah’s enjoying his European trip and lapping up the luuuuuv from the crowds like Jim Morrison on a three-day bender. Only I’m the one clutching the porcelain god and suffering bed-spins. Seems that Mr. Rock Star won’t be visiting wounded U.S. soldiers at our military hospitals in Germany …is it because they won’t let him bring in his campaign paparazzi?

Obama cancelled a request to visit wounded U.S. servicemen and women in hospitals at Rammstein and Landstuhl. The official word from the rock star’s spokespeople is that he decided it would be inappropriate to visit them on a trip paid for by campaign funds.

But NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube (big hat tip to Riverdaughter and Grayslady) reported that U.S. military officials told the Obama camp they could bring only two or three Senate staffers and absolutely no campaign photographers or campaign staff. The way NBC reports it, it’s hard not to conclude that Obama and friends withdrew their request to visit after they discovered they couldn’t treat it like a red carpet photo op. (What, Paris Hilton wasn’t available?)
If you actually care about wounded U.S. troops, you go visit them whenever you’re in the neighborhood, with or without your entourage. Punk-rocker-turned-author-and-speaker Henry Rollins does it. So can Obama. (I’d give up a few years of spa pedicures to see Henry take down Obama in a debate. You WILL NOT wrest me from my front-row seat.) Perhaps the campaign finance lawyers advised him to pull the plug on it. Sometimes you have to do what the lawyers tell you to. But that’s not what the campaign said.

I can’t decide if I’m more sick to my stomach or frightened by Obama’s European jaunt. We all know how much we need to rehabilitate our image in the world community, thanks to the “up yours” attitude of our present clown-in-chief, but it’s not Obama’s job to speak as America ’s leader yet. (If we HHers have our way, it never will be.) Yes, I know politicians running for office do these kinds of things—McCain has been to Canada , Mexico and Colombia lately, and I believe the campaign paid for all of them. I don’t consider such trips to be bad by definition (tacky and transparent plays for power, occasionally, but not necessarily dangerous). But Obama’s over-the-top media coverage, the stage craft and message control amping up his messiah-tude, and now the apparent phoniness of the cancelled hospital visits, contribute to my growing sense of dread that he’s becoming a rock star who believes his fans when they tell him he’s a god.

The trouble with rock stars is that they get so high off the uncritical luuuuv of the crowd that, if they’re not careful and strong and grounded, they’ll do anything to get that buzz. When they can’t get it from the crowd 24/7, they turn to drugs and booze and orgies to fill the gap, and we all know how that turns out. Obama’s not a substance-abusing rock star and he’s not going to need a stint at Betty Ford, so don’t anybody take me literally. For me, however, this trip is the latest sign that he’s getting drunk on his own press, his own spin, and his own worshippers. Another reason to say: No Deal! We’ve had nearly eight years of a leader so drunk on his own righteousness that he eviscerated the Constitution, led us into an ill-conceived and unnecessary war, gutted our economy for generations to come, and ruined our reputation around the world. This time out, I’d much prefer a sober leader.

• Leave a comment... (44)

Poor precious. I know you’re hurting.

It can’t be easy going from annointed media darling to target of vile attacks disguising as “satire” seemingly overnight. For the record, this PUMA thinks the New Yorker cover stinks like last week’s catch of the day.

Why, you are probably thinking, would someone so dedicated to derailing my coronation nomination be defending me? Well, Sen. Obama, PUMAs know a thing or three about faux satire. We are all too familiar with people saying hateful things about us and our candidate, then pretending it was all a joke. (If I had a dollar for all the times I’ve heard the complaint, “But I was only joking! You’re too sensitive!” I’d have the kind of wardrobe and shoe collection that would make Carrie Bradshaw seethe with envy.) When you’re on the receiving end, however, you know the difference between a joke, no matter how awkwardly delivered, and a hit. It’s not fun, is it?

We feel your pain, really. Jokes and jabs involving your genitalia just aren’t funny, either, are they?

The kind of tripe now masquerading as serious satire on the New Yorker cover does PUMAs no favors. First, real PUMAs don’t fall for silliness like that. And second, it makes it far too easy for your more vociferous supporters to lump any legitimate criticism of you together with racist, hateful effluvia. Enough PUMAs have been falsely accused of racism that I take any false, baseless accusations seriously. If the mag really wanted to satirize the rumors now vexing you and your wife, they could have, oh, let’s see, run a pointed headline with the cartoon? Or better yet, run a different cover??

Even though I think you should have expected things to get this ugly, it must still be a shock when the true ugliness falls on you like an anvil falling on Roger Rabbit’s head. Anybody familiar with Hillary Clinton’s public life can sympathize with you on that. That poor woman was excoriated for her alleged hidden sexual orientation—except when she was supposedly sleeping with Vince Foster, whom she later had killed. She was called every name under the sun and a few new ones for having the temerity to use her First Lady role to do more than host White House teas. And let’s not forget the stories about how she breathed fire and ate live babies for breakfast. And that’s all before she started running for president!

Funny, though. Despite living through one of the most ugly, sustained smear campaigns in American public life, Hillary Clinton still commanded the respect of 18 million voters in the primaries. She let it roll off of her with grace under fire and inner strength, impressing voters in states Democrats need to win the White House in November (you know, those states where you didn’t do so well?). As you just barely amassed enough delegates to claim you’d won the nomination,* Hillary’s trend was surging upward. Even funnier, her fundraising has been remarkably strong during the “suspension” of her campaign, especially compared to yours as the presumptive nominee.

Maybe that’s because while you’re only now dipping your toes into the crucible of American presidential politics, Hillary’s already survived it over and over again. Come to think of it, that’s one of the big reasons I supported her: her demonstrated ability to stand tall and proud against the ugliest politics imaginable.

Good luck with that.

* I’ll believe it when the votes are tallied

• Leave a comment... (71)

You know, just when I think Sen. Obama’s arrogance couldn’t offer me any more fodder, there’s more. He’s starting to remind me of those late-night TV commercials for the latest home-cleaning product, where they keep throwing more stuff at you to get you to buy. On sale now: the Pride-O-Matic! More egotism and arrogance than the other leading candidates!

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal examined the supposed negotiations going on between the Clinton and Obama campaigns. Because Sen. Clinton has so many delegates, she’s entitled under party rules to put her name into nomination. But if the report is correct, the Obama campaign’s trying to avoid that because they fear reminding everyone of how perilously close she came to beating him (even with all the dirty tricks her own party pulled against her).

There are a number of possible compromises they could work out before the end of August, involving various scenarios giving Hillary some public recognition in exchange for her agreeing to withdraw her name at one point or other in the process. But all of them contain the possibility of showing huge support among the party trench-toilers for our gal, which would embarrass and undercut Obama’s coronation nomination. Cut her out of the nomination process and risk protests on the floor of the convention. Include her and risk showing how un-unified the party is. Anything other than their perfectly-scripted Potemkin Convention would reveal the depth and breadth of the anger among Hil supporters for being shoved out of the process. That’s hardly propitious for a November victory.

Of course, the Obama camp could be afraid of contagious buyer’s remorse before Denver . His support’s already softening among his base because of his recent FISA vote and Republican-lite talk. What if he continued to shoot himself in the foot so badly that superdelegates considered him unelectable in November? If Hillary were still technically eligible for the nomination under such conditions, only a relative handful of superdelegates would have to switch votes to secure her nomination. Could that be the real reason they’re trying desperately to get her to deal away her rights on the convention floor?

But wait! There’s more!

The DNC has announced that The Precious will accept his coronation nomination at the 76,000-seat Invesco Field at Mile High, instead of the convention location (which holds about 20,000). The media types are already salivating over his magnanimous offering to the masses.

I think he just took a big, long asparagus-stinky piss all over the average Americans who actually get up off their asses to be involved in American politics.

Most convention delegates aren’t rich, powerful, famous people. Many scrape together the money to attend the convention by working overtime, pinching pennies, hoarding vacation days, even holding parties for friends and well-wishers to toss cash in the kitty. They’re young, old, middle-aged; white, black, yellow, brown, and every shade in between; white-collar, blue-collar, pink-collar. Their defining characteristic is their willingness to work, day in, day out, year after year, in local and state politics. These are the people who choose to attend the most boring meetings imaginable and become experts in wonk talk and parliamentary procedure. They force-feed themselves policy papers so that they can make sure we develop sensible public policy with input from everyday people, like them. They sacrifice time with their families and friends to become informed participants in the great American experiment. They think voting for the right candidates, from town meeting to president, is more important than voting for the next American Idol.

And Obama just whizzed all over them. By moving the coronation acceptance to the football stadium, Obama’s saying, “Your time away from your families doesn’t matter to me. Your study, your hard work, your admirable tolerance for boring meetings, your dedication, they’re irrelevant. The adoring throngs matter.”

Don’t mistake my criticism of Obama for newbie-bashing. I understand that many people don’t get involved in politics at the nuts-and-bolts level because they’re intimidated. I was one of them until I discovered, by mere luck, how easy it was to get involved. You can volunteer a little or a lot, but all you need to get in the door is a willingness to learn and to labor. It’s good for more people to want to be involved in the political process, and that includes Obama supporters, too. Democracy thrives on involvement. But being politically active isn’t just showing up at a stadium for a concert and a speech. Participation takes work. And if you want to encourage people to participate, it’s probably a bad idea to piddle on the people who actually do participate already.

The speech is scheduled for the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. I’m sure Dr. King would be pleased to see more Americans taking public process to heart. But what would he think of tossing aside the people who have long toiled in the trenches for liberty and justice in favor of bread and circuses?

• Leave a comment... (151)

As you no doubt know by now, Princess has been beset with charges of racism and threats because she hasn’t fallen in love with The Precious. After her recent physical threat at her home, I was ready to put my steel-toed mosh-pit specials on and kick some butt.

Then I realized that (1) my tiny little toes won’t provide her enough protection and (2) I’d only look like a reject from tryouts for Manchester United. This missive is certainly elementary for our regular posters, but I thought it might help our newer peeps navigate around trolls (heels with exceptionally bad manners and unlimited internet access) lurking on the open threads.

1. Heels come in all colors, genders, shapes, sizes and affiliations. While I love DSW, a.k.a. Nirvana for Shoe-Lovers, I dislike PWS (People Who Suck). Unfortunately, PWSs are on any side of an issue, campaign, or conflict. They don’t speak for the rest of us. Just as I hate being judged by the more fringe elements on my side, I’m sure the more sane Obama supporters hate being judged by the kinds of freak who tried to intimidate Princess. (I might question their judgment in candidates, but I’m willing to give them at least one benefit of the doubt on PWSs.)

2. People who dislike Barack Obama aren’t automatically racist anymore than people who dislike Hillary Clinton are automatically sexist. Lots of unfair things affected the Clinton campaign more than the Obama campaign, many of them unrelated to gender. But based on everything I saw in the primary, I believe that Hillary was impacted by a deep, institutional, public sexism far more than Obama was by racism. That conclusion does not make me racist. I happen to dislike Obama because I think he’s selling himself as something he’s not and because I fear the bully-like cult of personality springing up around him. I’ve disliked the same thing in plenty of white male politicians (hello, anybody remember W?), but it doesn’t mean I’m prejudiced against white males. I happen to dislike fundamentalist preachers who want the government to impose their particular misogynist, narrow interpretation of Christianity on me. That doesn’t make me anti-Christian or anti-religious; it makes me a fan of the First Amendment of the Constitution.

3. No politician can legitimately be everything to everybody. We can’t, either. We’re trying to reach those who are uneasy about Obama and the DNC and connect them with like-minded gals and guys. We’re also trying to make our case to people who are concerned but haven’t made up their minds yet. That’s our passion. Don’t criticize us if it’s not yours—go start your own blog.

4. Politics is about addition, not subtraction. In politics, every move will gain some voters and lose some voters. The challenge for politicians is finding the positions they can support consistently and expressing them in the way that gains them the most voters. We’re trying to combine our love of country, accessories, and humor to make our case to the public. Our trolls are trying to bully us into foregoing our rights as Americans to participate fully in the political process. Which side do you want to join?

5. Be the change you want to see. Here at HH, we try to use adult debate and sharp wit to further our cause. If you don’t like people giving you a bad label, choose your labels for other people with care (something most of our regular posters already do). Eschew the crazy unsubstantiated rumors, threats, and baseless accusations. Exercise your wit, not your tin foil hat. PUMAs think wit is a big turn-on!

Finally, a message to all you heels, trolls, and assorted pains-in-the-ass: You. Can’t. Stop. Us. We’ve been radicalized by the blatant misdeeds on the part of the DNC and we’re not going to be good quiet little girls stuffing envelopes in the back while the Big Boyz made all the big decisions. Don’t like it? Tough. Go do something productive for your candidate, if you believe in him so much—that’s how you help your candidate—but take your threats and your b.s. somewhere else. You’re boring and unoriginal.

• Leave a comment... (53)

Several cold, calculating and contradictory thoughts on this farce of an election have been assaulting my poor brain. It took two completely unconnected, random events—a recollection of Sean Connery and the sad news about George Carlin’s passing—to get those thoughts to stop bouncing and snap into sense.

George Carlin was not just a counterculture phenom, but a lover of language and truth. He loathed weighty jargon that obscured the truth of a thing. George was furious that the condition known as “shell shock” in WWI had its name watered down and down until it was known as post-traumatic stress disorder. “The pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ll bet you if we’d of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time,” he said.As for bigotry, George was equally bold. “You can’t be afraid of words that speak the truth, even if it’s an unpleasant truth, like the fact that there’s a bigot and a racist in every living room on every street corner in this country.” It was his way of demanding that we face the fact that racists exist.

So, in honor of George Carlin and his raw truths, I thought I’d face and share a few of my own:

Truth #1 Barack Obama is not my friend
He’s bad news, from his façade as a ‘transformational’ leader while engaging in old-style political shenanigans to his deft use of sexism against Hillary…from his own sexist behavior to his not-so-stealth takeover of the DNC to his shameful, shameful support of a FISA compromise that flips the bird to the Fourth Amendment (he gets bonus double shame points for someone who claims to be a constitutional scholar). That’s hardly news to us hireheels gals and sugardaddies. And his followers, who blithely ignore any evidence that their dear leader is less than admirable, frighten me even more. People in that kind of enraptured state do bad, bad things because they’re convinced it’s for a special/holy/moral reason. Please, angels, save us from the Obots!

Truth # John McCain is not my friend, either
I say this as someone who really wants to show the DNC that they’ve taken us for granted for the last time. But the maverick stuff is a myth. I can’t ignore hiscaving to the right wing on my bodily autonomy and birth control. Or his record on FISA. Or his painful lack of knowledge of the Constitution. Or his contempt for the Supreme Court when it upholds said Constitution. And especially his caving on torture. I love someone who will be deployed again if McCain wins the White House, so I care a lot about this one. That the nation’s most famous POW would make such a show of protecting the Geneva Conventions and then let the guy whose campaign started the “McCain fathered a colored daughter” rumors in the 2000 campaign define what constitutes torture…well, let’s just say Halliburton has the contract to build a special circle in Hell just for that. (He’s also known on Capitol Hill for his explosive, irrational temper. Imagine the crazy old bastard from your childhood neighborhood with nuclear launch codes. Now hand me another mojito to calm my nerves.)

Of course, the devil I know may be better than the devil I don’t, given that we actually have VOTES from McCain to study instead of cryptic cyphers and “present” votes from Obama. However, it still stinks like expired drugstore perfume that these are our choices. This is where Sean Connery comes in. Remember Sean as the sage beat cop Jimmy Malone in The Untouchables? His advice to Eliot Ness was very relevant to us PUMAs:

What are you prepared to do?

What are we prepared to do to improve the Sophie’s Choice we face in November? What are we prepared to do to stop the enraptured Obots from becoming our new stormtroopers if their leader gets the White House? What are we prepared to do to keep Obama from being George W. Bush with a D after his name? What are we prepared to do if McCain becomes president and doesn’t give a crap about us, either?

I’ll tell you what we do. We fight. Every single day. We remember what brought us together and we apply it, 365 days a year. We pester our congressmen and congresswomen with calls and emails till their staffers know our addresses better than their own. We convince them to honor their duty to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, lest they lose their seats when we run against them. We haunt our senators to make sure they’ll block any misogynist or corporate-whore judges because they’re more afraid of our wrath than whatever the Washington elites say. We become a force of nature.

Of course, that means we have to arrange our lives so that we can read the news regularly. Post to blogs. Keep ourselves informed about what’s really happening and not just what the blow-dried bobbleheads want us to know. (Never trust a man who uses more hairspray than you do.) Devote time and energy and effort to fighting tooth and nail for our country. That’s a tall order for most of us, who have enough trouble finding time to clean the kitchen, never mind hunt for real news. But if you’re serious, really serious, about making this big a stand, it’s necessary. George Carlin spoke uncomfortable truths. Sean Connery’s Jimmy Malone understood the cost of a blood oath in a deadly battle. And both of them inspire me to ask you: What are you prepared to do?

• Leave a comment... (86)

Now that we’ve had a few days to recover from our devastation, I think it’s time for a little cold, calculating thinking among those of us who hang out at the HireHeels Boutique and our sisters across the nation. Consider this:

1.) Politics is about the aquisition and use of power: The candidates we admire use power for the good of us all–to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic, to build an economy that lets us all earn our way to fiscal health and dignity, to help those who can’t help themselves. But the game of politics is about getting and using power. Those who fail to recognize that lose both power and elections. No power in the game, no power to help the people you want to help.

2.) Democrats need us to win in November: That makes us powerful. Obama and his true believers may be dissing us right now, but like it or not, they won’t win in November without us - PERIOD!

Keeping in mind those two premises, my question to all of us is: What do we really want? And what does Hillary want? (Besides a month at canyon ranch.)

We can’t read Hillary’s mind, but we can try to figure out our own. It’s not easy, with so much good, justified (misogynistic) reason to be angry. But in my exprience, this is exactly the time for us to pause and decide exactly what we want to get in exchange for our power. Talk about every possible action, even the ones that make us retch like the times we had too many Cosmos on empty stomachs. Play devil’s advocate with ourselves, to make sure we have examined every dark little corner of our strategy. (Something that Mark Penn SHOULD have done for the gadzillions he was earning…but I digress.) Do we want to see Hillary nominated for POTUS? VPOTUS? The promise of a cabinet post, seat on the Supreme Court? Or do we play hard-hard-hardball on Hillary’s agenda to get it adopted?

Just think about Denver (and the potential of our Million Woman March). If we’re organized and all singing that same 70’s “I Am Woman” tune, how frightening would that be to the DNC elders who were so quick to diss us. A bunch of brightly-dressed, focused, pissed-off women who have learned how to use their power? My OPI-polished toes are tingling at the very thought!

The Minx agrees that Hillary should go ahead and “suspend” her campaign right now. Once she’s no longer the target of all that media misogyny and hostility, why, Mr. Wonderful can have the whole glaring spotlight to himself.

Perhaps the Precious Pied Piper of droonlin’ dems might not do so well without Hillary deflecting the fire. Perhaps she’ll be bathed in angelic light as the convention draws near, while she still has all her unreleased delegates in her purse. Perhaps Precious
will implode. Whatever happens, the Dems still need what Hillary and her supporters (especially the gals) bring to the game. We’d better know exactly what to ask for when they come a’crawlin’ like a cheating spouse trying to settle the divorce before the mistress dumps him. Whichever way YOU go - make sure you answer: What do you want for your power?

• Leave a comment... (135)