Poll: if Palin runs in 2012, will that entice Hillary to run again?

Sarah Palin is a gifted politician. She may be crazy and wrong about a lot of stuff, but she’s still a charismatic leader. Read, for example, this thoughtful comment by Ciccina — who, I assure you from secret personal knowledge, is as much a radical feminist as myself. As Ciccina says, “she’s their Hillary.”

Sarah Palin is running for president. Whether she’ll still be running for president in 2012 is anybody’s guess, but I’m betting she will. And there’s a very good chance she will become the Republican nominee.

That will make her the first woman candidate for president on a major party ticket. Bite that.

So I’m wondering: what will Hillary do? I’m wondering it so much that I decided to make a little poll here and ask you all what you think.

Oh, goody: years and years of double standards to look forward to

Will it never end? Tonight the news is full of yammering about Sarah Palin writing on her hand. This is apparently more evidence that she is a moron bimbo from outer space, etc., etc., etc.

I used to have a boyfriend who wrote on his hand. I thought it was a rather juvenile habit for a grownup, but whatever. (I used to ask him why he didn’t just buy a fricking notepad. He insisted that hands were more convenient.) The thing is, nobody ever accused him of being stupid because of it. He had a graduate degree or two and was a successful executive in the financial industry.

What kinds of things did he write on his hand? The same kinds of things I write on my notepad. Words. Names. Reminders that are meaningless to anyone else.

So Sarah Palin writes on her hand. Just like my ex-boyfriend. Big whoop.

People seem particularly excited about this because the words Palin wrote on her hand — “energy,” “tax,” “lift American spirits” — were topics of her speech, or maybe of the Q&A afterwards. Shouldn’t she already know such simple things? the excited people ask indignantly. How absurd for her to need reminders!

Ahem. Anybody else remember “Message: I care”? (If you don’t, look it up.) People ridiculed Bush for being phony and insincere, but nobody suggested that he needed the reminder because he was actually too stupid to hold the thoughts in his head.

But then, President Bush had a penis. Which makes all the difference. My ex-boyfriend had a penis too, now that I think of it. Funny how that works.

Oh, I forgot: I titled the post this way because I also see that Palin is acknowledging that she might run for president in 2012. That means we have years of this to look forward to. Years and years.

Snowed in, clumping mascara edition

Look at those branches. I think that’s the effect you’re supposed to get from using powder + mascara. Thickens the lashes.

I sure hope my internet doesn’t go out.

Super Bowl = Patriarchy

I’m not really paying attention to the Super Bowl news, seeing as how I’m still busy with my secret new women’s group thingy. Actually I wouldn’t be paying attention even if I weren’t busy, because jesus, who gives a shit? In fact, I was surprised to realize today that the stupid game hasn’t happened yet. Isn’t it always in January? Aren’t we now in February? Has there been a wobble in the region of space-time occupied by the NFL?

At any rate, the reason I’m aware of the impending Super Bowl at all is because of the hilariously offensive anti-abortion ad sponsored by Focus on the Family. (It’s hilarious to me, at least; personally I long for an ad in which a mother explains how she was advised to get an abortion and refused — and now her grown son is a serial killer. If only I’d aborted the little creep!) Some muddled souls are saying that this ad is about “choice,” but it’s not. It’s about patriarchy. The whole Super Bowl is about patriarchy: the game, the cheerleaders, the commercials, the ritual, the whole thing.

The number one rule of patriarchy — the guiding principle, the foundation of it all — is that women are the sex class. They aren’t individual people, like men; they aren’t full members of the human race. They are appendages. Their role is to give birth to men, to nurture men, to marry men, to fuck men, to serve men, and so on. The only real people in this setup are men. The world belongs to men and is their sphere: theirs to fight over, dominate, settle, destroy, remake. Women are simply adjuncts, like talking pets or livestock.

The Super Bowl is a precise reflection of this world view. In that sense, the Focus on the Family spot is a perfect fit. It’s all of a piece with the whole scheme. The only thing new here is that abortion is considered a “political” topic — unlike dressing women up as prostitutes or reducing them to sex toys, which is the usual Super Bowl approach.

Which is not to say that I think the appropriate response here is just to wave in vague disgust at the general misogynistic nastiness of the world as we recline on our sofas in the opium den. Eh, whaddya gonna do? Pass me that pipe. Patriarchy has to be disassembled brick by brick, and the Super Bowl ad is as good a place to take a stand as any. As Jaclyn Friedman writes in The Nation:

The ad becomes even more disturbing when we consider who it’s trying to reach. Assuming that Focus on the Family operates with the same mindset as most Super Bowl advertisers (and there’s really no evidence to suggest otherwise), it’s also safe to assume that men are one of the primary targets of this spot. So now what we’ve got is an ad telling men that it’s wrong for women to abort their potential children, lest those children not get the chance to grow up to be famous quarterbacks who paint Scripture references into their eyeblack. In light of new research revealing that about a third of women who report partner violence also report that their partners try to pressure them into pregnancy and motherhood (as do 15 percent of women who had never reported relationship violence), this male-targeted argument is particularly chilling.

Unfortunately, I missed all the excitement last week with NOW and Sarah Palin and NOW again and all that. (I heard Terry O’Neill did great on Larry King, though.) As usual, the self-delusional rhetoric from the pro-lifers serves to obscure the real issue. “Messages like this empower women!” says Sarah Palin in defense of the ad. Empower us to do what? Have babies? Uh, Sarah, we’ve got that covered. Having babies is Job 1 for women under patriarchy. A commercial telling us to have babies is about as empowering as a commercial telling us to take up sewing. Or cooking. Really: the baby thing? We’ve got that down.

Nor is this an improvement on the “be a sexbot” message emanating from the rest of the Super Bowl effluvium. “For too long women have been made to feel like sex objects in our ‘modern’ culture,” Palin says, and she’s absolutely right. But being made to feel like baby machines is the same fucking deal. Get it? Get it?

Snowed in!

Several inches of snow arrived at the Smoking Lounge today, as you can see from the above photo. By the way, this is a rare opportunity for you all to see Raoul in his ectoplasm form, albeit covered in snow. See those two snow drift shapes in the chairs? That’s actually Raoul and Nietzsche in spirit form, coated with a light dusting of precipitation.

Meanwhile, I’m still head down with the website I’m putting together. I did note with great hilarity that the President used his State of the Union address to reach out to Republicans. Remember what I said about Che Guevara? Yeah.

I think it’s definitely time for a serious confab on third-party politics. As soon as I get past this website thingy I’m doing I’ll be able to re-focus my white-hot laser-like beam of attention on the situation. There’s the Justice Party, and Mr. Jeff Roby has a very interesting approach he’s calling Full Court Press. I definitely like the tactical idea of running a challenger in every single district — that’ll get their attention.

So, what else is going on out there?

Best post title on the State of the Union address

It’s from Bruce Dixon over at Black Agenda Report:

Obama State of the Union: Guns For the Pentagon, Butter For Wall Street, A Spending Freeze For You

Beautiful, innit? Kind of sums it all up. (But go read the whole post, too.)

Is anybody planning to watch the speech? I would, but I’m too busy with this website thingy I’m trying to get launched. Somebody told me on the phone that Sarah Palin is attacking NOW for their stance on unborn football players, but I don’t even have time to go look it up.

Open thread.

Obama re-brands himself as a Tea Partier

People, I’m scrambling this week to get the site for a new feminist group launched — no, it’s not in competition with the Justice Party; this is a different thing — which is why I must continue to toil today in my little javascript dungeon of hell. But it’ll be totally worth it.

So instead of a proper post, here’s an open thread on the Presidential Disaster Train Coming To A Theater Near You. From Memeorandum:

• Paul Krugman: Obama Liquidates Himself
• Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight: The White House’s Brain Freeze
• Brad DeLong / Grasping Reality with Opposable Thumbs: Barack Herbert Hoover Obama?
• Paul Rosenberg / Open Left: It’s Official: Obama is an idiot
• Jonathan Zasloff / The Reality-Based Community: Obama’s Self-Inflicted Lobotomy Proceeds Apace
• Marc Ambinder / The Atlantic Politics Channel: Obama’s Three-Year Freeze; Democrats’ Brain Freeze

And my favorite:

• Mark Mooney / ABCNEWS: Exclusive: Obama Would ‘Rather Be Really Good One-Term President’

I think we can help him with at least one part of that equation.

And now for our next trick, we’ll grant corporations the right to vote and habeas corpus

This is bad. This is really, really bad.

Corporations are people now, and money is speech. Dear god.

As Doug Kendall observes:

Citizens United blows away any notion that conservative judges, who profess to be “originalists” and “umpires,” are in fact faithful to our Constitution’s text and history or bound by reasoned precedent.

But of course we already knew that. Confirmation of that truth is the least of my concerns.

The real issue here is ohmygod. Ohmyfuckinggod.

On the other hand, maybe this is exactly what we need…(Justice Party reboot/open thread)

Last night, considering the Brown victory in Massachusetts, I predicted: “The overwhelming shit train of nonsense that will emerge from this will not be in our favor.” I would love to be proved wrong.

I still maintain that the Democrats will interpret this election as meaning they need to move right. That’s what Democrats do. It’s how they interpret everything. They’re like a mechanical device for fucking up and moving right. Just wind ‘em up and watch ‘em go.

Anyway, what I’m wondering now is if the shock of this thing could actually be great enough to create an opening for a genuinely progressive party. I’m wondering that because even Ezra Klein, professional Democrat apologist, compromiser, and beltway zeitgeist purveyor, is fed up:

The fundamental pact between a political party and its supporters is that the two groups believe the same thing and pledge to work on it together. And the Democratic base feels that it has held to its side of the bargain. It elected a Democratic majority and a Democratic president. It swallowed tough compromises on the issues it cared about most. It swallowed concessions to politicians it didn’t like and industry groups it loathed. But it persisted. Because these things are important. That’s why those voters believe in them. That’s why they’re Democrats.

But the party looks ready to abandon them because Brown won a special election in Massachusetts — even though Democrats can pass the bill after Brown is seated. What that says is crucial: Whereas the base thought it was making these hard compromises and getting up early to knock on doors because these issues are important, the party thought all that was happening because, well, it’s hard to say. It was electorally convenient? People need something to do? Ted Kennedy wanted it done?

If Democrats let go of health care, there is no doubt that a demoralized Democratic base will stay home in November. And that’s as it should be. If the Democratic Party won’t uphold its end of the bargain, there’s no reason its base should pretend the deal is still on.

I don’t expect Ezra to stick to this tune; I imagine in a few days he’ll be back to his usual Panglossian “the Democratic world is the best of all possible worlds” shtick. But it’s revealing that he’s feeling this way now, and feeling it strongly enough that he’s putting it in print.

And so this seems an opportune moment to re-open discussions about the Justice Party. After a month+ hiatus for the holidays and my horrifying dental emergency, it’s time to regroup. (Possible slogan to distinguish us from the Democrats: Leaders. Not hand puppets. Yes, I’m kidding.)

Mostly, I’d like to start with hearing what people are thinking right now. A lot has happened in the past month or so, and I’m sure people have been hatching ideas.

So: thoughts?

A silver lining on healthcare reform?

I was fascinated last night to see that Anthony Weiner and Barney Frank were two of the first out of the gate with statements that Scott Brown’s win meant healthcare reform needed to pause. Now, these guys are not conservatives. Weiner is Mr. Single Payer himself, and Barney ain’t no slouch. I thought last night that these two guys were taking Brown’s win as an opportunity to derail the existing POS healthcare bills and maybe re-boot the process.

And now, Ezra Klein has a post up with a suggestion on how the Democrats might move forward:

Democrats could scrap the legislation and start over in the reconciliation process. But not to re-create the whole bill. If you go that route, you admit the whole thing seemed too opaque and complex and compromised. You also admit the limitations of the reconciliation process. So you make it real simple: Medicare buy-in between 50 and 65. Medicaid expands up to 200 percent of poverty with the federal government funding the whole of the expansion. Revenue comes from a surtax on the wealthy.

And that’s it. No cost controls. No delivery-system reforms. Nothing that makes the bill long or complex or unfamiliar. Medicare buy-in had more than 51 votes as recently as a month ago. The Medicaid change is simply a larger version of what’s already passed both chambers. This bill would be shorter than a Danielle Steel novel. It could take effect before the 2012 election.

Do it! Do it! Do it! That is definitely a step in the right direction!

Good on ya, young Ezra. Wish you’d been singing this song all along.

*****

P.S. Over at Corrente, otherwise known as Single Payer Central, they’re having an emergency pledge drive. Corrente is an absolutely invaluable voice in the blogosphere — or rather, multiple voices, seeing as how it’s a group blog and everything. If you can possibly spare it, please throw them a few bucks.