Politics: Surviving an Attempted PUMA Mauling

Added to the usual stress of a New York City commute this morning was a sweet faced older lady who turned out to be that rare but oft-mentioned species: The PUMA. PUMAs (party unity my ass) are people who, quite simply, put gender before actual issues. This is the essential danger of out of control rampant identity politics - something Republicans have latched onto with Palin after criticizing Democrat minority candidates for years as being nothing more than vote repositories for folks who feel disenfranchised. Here's how the PUMA attack went down:

Older lady on bench at 3 train station: Want to see MY pin?

Me: Sure

She opens her palm to reveal a post-it note(!) that says "NoBama."

Me (edging away): Well...good luck!

Older lady: Want to know why?

Me: I can't imagine...

Older lady: Oh I think you can...how dare he deny a woman like Hillary the nomination. An important leader who should be our President! (getting loud I might add)

Me: You can't rewrite history (shrugs)

Older lady: Hillary ought to be our President!

Me: So you are going to vote for a ticket that stands for the opposite of everything she's worked for?

Older lady: I don't care. You know on election day there are going to be riots and cries of "Kill Whitey" if he doesn't get in...(She actually said this!)

Me (stepping into my mercifully arrived train): I've met Hillary and she'd be disgusted by that comment...

So I managed to escape with my life and dignity intact but beware! PUMAs are loose in New York City's subways. And they are vicious...

Sarah Palin: Double Standard Sarah Wants Special Treatment - But Just For Her

Remember when Republicans used to criticize Democrats for playing "identity" politics? Well the shoe's on the other foot. VP candidate "Double Standard" Sarah Palin sets the gold standard for "Do as I say, not as I do." Here's the very abbreviated list - I'm sure there's more!

Right to Choose
1) Palin is against a woman's right to choose, even in cases of rape or incest. Yet she describes her daughter's decision to keep her child as a "private choice." Only Double Standard Sarah's daughter gets to choose - yours won't if she gets elected.

The Double Standard Family
2) About that "private" bit -- Palin has been out there railing at the media for covering her family's travails. Then at the GOP convention the entire brood is trotted out as a living mosaic of "small-town family values"- including pregnant teen daughter and McCain photo-op participant fiancee Levi. Only Double Standard Sarah gets to exploit her family.

Animal Comparisons
3) Palin can compare an entire made up female demographic to dogs but when Obama dares to call out the McCain Bush policies for what they are - Lipstick on a Pig - her tender feelings are hurt. Could he mean her? Here I thought she was supposed to be a tough pit bull. Double Standard Sarah can Dish it out but she can't take it.

Wasteful Spending
4) Palin blathers on about how she's a fiscal conservative. On what planet? She took a small town from a surplus to $60 million in the red as mayor. She continues to lie about the chef she had as governor who continues to draw a paycheck and was never fired. Then there is the recent revelation that she had taxpayers pay her a per diem for staying in her own house at night - more than 300 times. Only Double Standard Sarah deserves earmarks and special payments for staying at home - wasteful spending.


Add your own Double Standard Sarah moment in the Comments!

Politics: McCain - A Big Pussy

Larry King: "What the hell do I do with all this bamboo... I need some fingernails..."

There - I said it. I have tried hard to keep the politics off this blog so far - there are plenty of good commentators out there. Yet once crow-like crypt-keeping Larry King gets dragged in I have to comment. Apparently one of CNN's people dared to ask McCain's manager some tough questions about Sarah Palin's readyness to be Vice President - and follow up. For the transgression of picking apart Mr. Bounds tissue thin reasoning McCain is punishing the entire network by refusing to be interviewed by professional gladhander King. Not a lot of balls for a guy who bases a great deal of political capital on his war record. Pathetic! Here's slick Tucker Bounds getting filleted on some pretty basic stuff:

Politics: Obama Brings Politics of Hope to Iowa

The Iowa Caucuses ended last night with not-so-surprising victories from the scrappy challengers of party orthodoxy for both Republicans and Democrats. Mike Huckabee's happy-face religious conservatism triumphed over a divided Republican field as Barack Obama's positivism trumped Hillary Clinton's call for experienced leadership and John Edward's populist-by-way of Matlock-isms.

What did impress was the margin of Obama's victory over his two fellow candidates -- nearly ten points --and a victory speech that was among the best political speeches I've heard in my lifetime. Below is the speech in full. It sags a bit when he gets to thanking the hard-working campaigners on his staff but the beginning and ending are pure gold. If he can keep up the politics of hope and renewal that he so eloquently and movingly laid out last night in New Hampshire the entire tenor of the race for President could change.

Below is his speech in full:

Happy New Year! New Year's Wishes for 2008

I'm back from a whirlwind Brady-bunch style vacation in Hawaii and in between being on the beach in Waikiki at 4:30 AM to grab prime towel space and the long flight times I'm exhausted. Still, I did have time to think about some New Year's hopes and dreams.



1) Let's elect one of these people above.The New Yorker this week aptly describes the Democratic front-runners as The Mod Squad (here's a pic for you youngsters who don't get the reference): (Clockwise from top, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama) and I'll take any one of these three. Looking at the parade of has-beens, hacks, and fanatics of both the religious and secular stripe running on the Republican side it's almost enough to make an agnostic pray.


2) Get our brave men and women out of Iraq! The United States looks more and more like a paper tiger as long as we are pinned down in an intractable civil war.


3) No more movie threesomes (or foursomes). In the film world good things come in twos...maybe. Godfather III, Spiderman 3, Shrek The Third, Smokey and the Bandit 3: Smokey is The Bandit... need I go on? The Bourne Ultimatum is the exception that proves the rule.


4) While we're at it, resolve the writers' strike Hollywood! For the peanuts (or walnuts in head writer Rob Petrie's case above) the writers are asking for the producers could get back to business -- especially as the networks bleed viewers and the next humongo-budgeted abominable remake is greenlit (perhaps The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Movie starring Jim Carrey as Rob and Renee Zellweger as Laura.)



5) Enough already with Abe Foxman (above)! As leader of the Anti-Defamation League he theoretically does a service by publicly rooting out anti-Semitism in its myriad forms. However, like the Pope's denunciation of The Golden Compass (a film our erstwhile correspondent Cletus described to me today as incomprehensible), Foxman seems to be more interested in rooting out publicity for himself. Case in point: The ridiculous mini-fracas over Will Smith's perfectly innocent and quite sensible comments about Adolf Hitler. Smith said: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.'" Only a moron could interpret that as somehow condoning Hitler. The real crime here was the lousy writing of the staff writer for Scotland's Daily Record newspaper who set up Smith's thoughtful observation with the line "Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good." Actually, what Will Smith was saying is that everyone has the capacity for self-deception, something Abe Foxman and others should have thought about before forcing Smith to issue a totally unnecessary apology.


6) Cherish our right to make choices. Especially for minorities, the right to have an active say and to vote in the political process of the United States and in many countries around the world is a precious thing. Some, like Benazir Bhutto, have given their lives for that right. My grandmother was born into a world in which her mother didn't have the right to vote. It's a simplification of what was a complex political life but for me Benazir Bhutto stands for the idea of the secular democratic rule of law -- one which sees no boundaries of gender and race.



7) Energy independence. Firstly it will save us from the sanctimony of people who buy full-sized hybrid SUVs (like the Chevy Tahoe pulling up to New York's Chelsea Piers above). Now of course the Bush/Cheney cronies in the oil and gas lobby think this means drilling all over the United States but we need to break the oil habit for good and come up with entirely new, clean energy sources on our own here. The government could spend even a fraction of what they have on Iraq and reap greater benefits to the environment and to national security.

Politics: Gore, U.N. Share Peace Prize

Al Gore signals what direction global temperatures will take in the coming century...

President-elect and current non-candidate Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday with the United Nation's climate change panel. No word yet on the climate change panel's plans for 2008 but it still looks as if the Goreacle will sit the next election out. There are good reasons why:

1) The cash race has started earlier than ever and even though Gore could raise a ton he'd be playing catch up.

2) The climate change alarm still isn't at critical proportions. Hitler had to roll through most of Europe before the British political class turned to Churchill and sadly we'll probably have to suffer through more radical climactic change for the country to turn it's eyes to Gore.

3) He has had more influence outside of Washington than he had inside -- why would he want to go back? The minute he becomes a candidate all the good press goes away and the knives come out.