A Sex Symbol or frigid Figure

Despite Sarah Palin's tight French twist, rimless yet expensive eyewear, and drab straight skirts, both Democrats and Republicans agree the conservative vice-presidential candidate is a looker.

"I find her very attractive, bubbly, and with a definite sex appeal to her," said Marathon Grill owner and Democrat Cary Borish.

Palin may be downplaying her prettiness - a February article in Vogue said she once told a reporter that she was trying to be "as frumpy as I could by wearing my hair on top of my head and these schoolmarm glasses" - but it's not working.

Then again, in 2008, why should it have to?

"I think what happens with women in politics is their appearance becomes the story as opposed to the substance of what these women are saying," said Debbie Walsh, director for the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, on her way back from the Republican National Convention.

"And that diminishes or minimizes the power they have because it questions their political astuteness and ignores what it took for them to get there."

True. I can't begin to estimate the amount of column space, and cyberspace, dedicated to how first ladies and female politicos dress.

On one hand, it's frivolous. Who cares if Palin's $375 eyeglass frames were created by Japanese industrial designer Kazuo Kawasaki when she also wants to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

But it can't be denied that a woman's choice of clothing, right down to her shade of lipstick, helps define who she is.

Up until the 1900s, women's petticoats and ruffles were indicative of their roles as the weaker sex.

Today, a woman's fashion choices are a window into her soul, reflecting beliefs she holds dear. Most important, her clothes communicate how she wants to be perceived.

Clearly Palin, a former beauty queen, embraces her femininity - and she's willing to use it when necessary. But the mother of five understands that she must look authoritative in the world of male-dominated politics to be taken seriously.

When John McCain announced Palin as his vice-presidential pick, the hair piled high on her head, paired with her red, round-toed Apepazza Musa pumps, gave off a mature yet sexy-secretary air. When a reporter asked Palin's publicist who designed her boxy bone jacket, he was told it wasn't important.

So much is left to the imagination.

But at any moment, Palin can spin around on those buckled heels, take the pins out of her hair - say, while delivering an acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention - and like Wonder Woman, become an amazon avenger pointedly defending her anti-abortion and gun-rights causes.

"She's every man's fantasy," said Nick Berardi, a stylist at Richard Nicholas Hair Studio in Center City. "That hairstyle is her look that's a part of her personality. It's so much a part of who she is."

This wholly feminine package is what Republicans are hoping will persuade undecided women and slightly annoyed Hillary Clinton supporters to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket in November.

The party is so sure of the Palin presentation that supporters wore buttons at the RNC that read "Hottest V.P. From the Coolest State."

If that didn't make Clinton quake in her bone flats, what would?

"She is so playing the sex card," said Karen O'Connor, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University.

"But to be called the hottest vice-presidential candidate is appalling to me, and it denigrates women. . . . And if you look at her hair, it reminds me of Phyllis Schlafly" - the conservative political activist who opposes feminism and the equal rights amendment.

(McCain and Palin say they support equal pay for women but don't want to change the 180-day limit women have to file a complaint.)

One thing is sure, Palin is being taken seriously even though she oozes sexuality. In fact, Palin is being lauded as the gutsy half of a ticket that will shove Barack Obama and Joe Biden into a corner. And that's a good thing for women who are tired of denying who they are in corporate and political arenas.

At the same time, if it weren't for courageous political women who swallowed their sexuality - or were ridiculed for lack of it - Palin wouldn't have had the opportunity last week to wow the crowd in Minneapolis.

Like all women if her position on abortion prevailed, she would be without a choice - on the politics she touted or the outfit she picked - whether or not she was a looker.

Christian Right Fanatics Have Found Their Pin-Up: Sarah Palin

By handing the Republican Party back to the Christian Right fanatics, McCain has made a decision to unleash the ugliest forces in American politics.

In particular, the Republicans will be stoking racism in a country founded on slavery. Even if the strategy provokes an outcry and a backlash, the right's renewed enthusiasm will sanction racist ideas among at least some people who would have felt less confidence to speak up otherwise. The result, therefore, will be to contribute to social polarization.

Whatever criticisms we make of Obama--and we have many--we utterly reject the racist and reactionary slurs promoted by the Republican candidates, and with even more enthusiasm by the right-wing ideologues who pollute talk radio and other corners of the media.

How quickly and sharply people turn against the Republican attack machine will depend to a great extent on how determined the Democrats are in challenging them. The lack of a tougher response so far is allowing the right to stay on the offensive.

Obama and the Democrats have remained quiet because they fear raising hopes and expectations any further among the millions of people excited by the promise of change.

In the months since he clinched the Democratic nomination, Obama's chief concern has been to prove himself a safe alternative for the corporate and political establishment. But that has meant avoiding an open fight with the right.

On the contrary, because Obama and his advisers accept conservative assumptions about what working-class people supposedly think and want, their bid to capture the "middle ground" depends on adopting many of the right's arguments.

The calculation is that if the Obama campaign went on the attack on the issue of racism in America or a woman's right to choose, it would lose votes.

Setting aside the fact that the attempt to win over so-called "swing voters" has failed for the Democrats time after time, at a more fundamental level, this strategy shows just how little the Democrats have to offer the people they claim to represent.

Obama & McCain: Vying to Be Toughest Bastard

Ignoring public sentiment, both party nominees stress "national security" and face off on who's toughest on "terrorism." For 2009, expect more of the same. A continued right wing agenda.

Bigger budgets for militarism. Police state repression for enforcement. Little attention to public needs. No end to wars and occupation. Possible new ones against Iran, Pakistan, elsewhere in Eurasia, and a resurgent confrontation with Russia.

Welcome to the future. Securing it for capital. More of the same after eight years under Bush. New policies the same as failed ones. Hopes again raised and then dashed. Repeating November 2006.

Everything changed but stayed the same. New faces, same agenda. All parts interchangeable. A two party duopoly assures it. Get prepared. The new incumbent will disappoint, and if it's John McCain consider Chalmers Johnson's advice about a Vancouver condo for safety.

No guessing about a man who even scares some in the Pentagon. Extremists on the right advise him.

He's comfortable with a 100 year Iraq occupation. Militarism as a way of life. American boots on the ground everywhere. An enlarged military to achieve it - 150,000 more troops for starters.

Endless wars. For their own rewards. Imperialism for its own sake. Colonizing everything. Committed to the most extremist Israeli - Christian Right agenda.

Unilateralism. Nationalism. Patriotism's dark side. Americanism as expansionism. Unlimited federal power. Civil liberties sacrificed for security.

One-sided support for privilege. A future most Americans oppose. A man to make Cheney look like Gandhi, according to Pat Buchanan. A de facto third Bush term or worse. GW on steroids some believe.

Absolute executive power. Rock hard-line. A neo-con's neocon. Unparalleled dangers under him. No different than most dictators. No one to trust with the presidency. Think it can't happen here. Think again.

Would Obama be as bad or worse? Likely not. Just the lesser of two evils or what Ralph Nader calls the "evil of two lessers."

No choice to settle for in his judgment.

Especially when both candidates support global militarism, backing Israel and the Christian Right against Iran, unilaterally attacking Pakistan, staying in Iraq for the duration, upping the ante in Afghanistan, and risking a dangerous Eurasian confrontation with Russia.

Both conventions are over. It's Obama v. McCain, and expect the winner to disappoint like always and on what voters say matter most - ending aggressive wars and addressing long-neglected social needs, made all the worse given capitalism's global crisis and both parties' commitment to privilege.

After the Democrat convention ended, author, media activist, critic, and independent filmmaker Danny Schechter wrote: "You won't hear a call for a national crackdown on the corporate crime, fraud, and abuse that, in just the last few years, have robbed trillions of dollars from workers, investors, pension holders, taxpayers and consumers....Democrats will not shout for a payback of ill-gotten gains, to rein in executive pay, ending corporate personhood, or to demand corporate sunshine laws."

Instead of embracing change, Obama has a rogue's gallery for advisors. He's largely dismissive. Assures business as usual, and wants to prove he's toughest on national security.

He's for expanding the military - for starters, 65,000 more Army troops and 27,000 more Marines along with bigger supportive budgets.

Can Obama Win Back Wal-Mart Moms?

White women are always a key demographic in close races. Classic swing voters, they tend to be more pragmatic than partisan and usually make up their minds late in the race.

The ones who matter most, however, are not necessarily the same in each presidential election. In 1996 they were the "soccer moms" who responded to Bill Clinton's small-bore initiatives and rescued his presidency.

The white female vote was crucial to George W. Bush's victory in 2004, a year that was marked by the post-9/11 political emergence of the so-called security mom — a term, interestingly enough, coined by Joe Biden, the man who is now Obama's running mate.

But where 55% of white women voted for Bush in 2004, only 50% voted for Republican candidates in the 2006 midterm elections, which was one of the reasons the party lost both houses of Congress.

And as much as Palin pleases the conservative base of the party, white women were the real target audience McCain was aiming at with his surprise pick of the Alaska governor.

The campaign hopes female voters will relate to her thoroughly modern and complicated everywoman story, even if they don't agree with her on the issues.

The women that pollsters are watching most closely this year are different in some ways from their "soccer mom" and "security mom" sisters of those earlier election cycles.

For one thing, they are slightly older than soccer moms (in their 40s and 50s) and are juggling another set of problems — how to pay for college for their kids, how to take care of their elderly parents.

They are also less upscale. Lacking college degrees, they are more likely to be feeling the brunt of an array of economic problems that now includes high energy prices, rising unemployment, soaring health-care costs and housing foreclosures.Democratic pollster Celinda Lake calls them "Wal-Mart moms" and "Wal-Mart grandmas" and says they are not so much undecided as conflicted in making their choice this year.

Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who served as chief strategist of Hillary Clinton's campaign in its final days, agrees.

"Frankly, it's because they are conflicted on Obama," he says. "They'd like to vote for a Democrat, but they're not sure Obama is the one."

The Democratic nominee has not yet made the sale with these female voters, in part because they have yet to be convinced he has the experience he needs, and also because they are more culturally conservative than he is.

And there could be another factor, one that is harder for pollsters to measure. "They are more racially sensitive, honestly," than younger and more educated women, says Lake.

Sarah Palin: Ex-Participant on the Jerry Springer Show

Okay, I have to vent here. We all get a little crazy sitting alone at our keyboards in this business, and it's finally gotten to me.I know there are serious signs of a complete mental breakdown in the US, with polls reporting that millions of people are actually excited at having a low-rent religious fanatic who consistently mispronounces pundit as "pundint" (shades of Dubya!)>

Someone who ilfers state funds for her family's personal use, lies about her alleged opposition to Washington pork, claims the bloody war in Iraq is "God's will," forces her 17-year-old daughter to make a momentary mistake into a lifetime one by marrying the kid who got her pregnant.

And someone who refers to blacks as "sambo" and to Alaska's indigenous people as "arctic arabs," running for vice president on the ticket with a man who is a walking medical disaster waiting to happen.

These are probably the same people who still give the worst president in the history of the Union a 30 percent approval rating, who keep watching reality TV shows (perhaps thinking they're real), and who still think having 180,000 US troops indiscriminately slaughtering Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis is making the US "safe."

So this is what it has come to in America. We're ready to put a refugee from the "Jerry Springer" show a missed heartbeat away from the White House.

Is this a great country or what?

Fannie & Freddie: Bailout Reveals Bankruptcy of American Capitalism

The US government takeover of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has dealt a shattering blow to the ideology of market capitalism, which has been used for decades to justify a relentless assault on the working class and a vast transfer of wealth to the American ruling elite.

The endless invocations of the virtues of private enterprise, individual entrepreneurship and self-reliance, used to demonize socialism and defend a system that exploits the vast majority for the benefit of a financial elite, have been exposed as frauds. When it comes to big capital, losses are socialized. Only profits remain private.

The same forces who year after year have inveighed against “big government” in order to justify the removal of all legal impediments to the accumulation of corporate profits and private fortunes, and carry out the destruction of social safeguards for the working class, have engineered a massive expansion of government power to safeguard the interests of the financial elite.

The bailout has as well exposed the real relations of political power and influence behind the façade of American democracy.

The largest government bailout of private companies in world history—whose ultimate cost to taxpayers is likely to reach hundreds of billions—was sanctioned in advance by the Democratic Congress and given instant approval by the leadership of both parties and both of their presidential candidates.

There have been no investigations into the greatest financial scandal in world history.

Neither party has any interest in bringing to light the swindling and skullduggery of the Wall Street moguls, because they are both bound hand and foot to those responsible for the financial debacle.

What has been revealed is the existence in the United States, behind the increasingly tattered veneer of democratic institutions, of a plutocracy—the political rule of the rich.

When it comes to the basic interests of the financial aristocracy, both parties and all of the official institutions of society snap to attention and do the bidding of their Wall Street masters.

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